Speedbumps on the Way to Forever
by Queen of the Castle
Summary: Doctor/Rose. A rogue Torchwood agent crosses universes to end up on a bus on a planet called Midnight. Along the way, however, she discovers that there's a more important job to be done than just stopping the stars from going out.
1. Chapter One

Author's Notes: Goes AU from 'Midnight'. Instead of just sending a message through to the Doctor, Rose appears on the Crusader 50 in person. In this chapter, some dialogue is taken directly or paraphrased from 'Midnight', so credit to Russell T Davies, the writer of that episode, for those parts.

* * *

"If you try to throw her out that door, you'll have to get past me first."

The passengers of the Crusader 50 vehicle contemplated the Doctor in silence for a long moment.

"OK," the Hostess said.

"Fine by me," Biff agreed.

The Doctor wondered, not for the first time, what he saw in the human race.

"Oh, now you're being stupid," he said, and immediately wished he could take that back – calling them idiots was probably not going to help considering how tense the situation already was. "Just think about it!" he added instead. "Could you actually take hold of someone and throw them out of that door?"

As he'd half expected, he'd somehow made it so much worse. They lobbed accusations at him, and nothing he said seemed to stop them. One after the other they all turned on him, every one of them. In the background, Sky echoed their accusations like an affirmation. It grated on the Doctor's last nerve. No, more than that. It made him feel the beginnings of real fear. And that fear made _him_ stupid, just for a moment, just long enough to let his frustration out in one shouted, "Because I'm clever!"

He didn't even need their reactions to know he'd gone too far.

"What, d'you mean ... we throw him out as well?" Biff asked.

"If we have to."

The Doctor started to back away. He held up his hands, placating. "Look, just ..." he began, but he was interrupted by a crackling electrical sort of sound coming from behind him. Ion energy, he thought wildly, tasting a tang of it in the air. Not quite a teleport – those had a distinctive feel to them – but somehow similar. He swung around to look at Sky, wondering what on earth she could be doing now. Was she – or rather, the thing inside her – bringing more of its kind inside the vehicle somehow? Were there more out there? With everyone in the vehicle already going half mad in response to just one of the creatures, for once the Doctor's curiosity wasn't running quite wild enough to want to find out for sure.

The Doctor didn't expect a blonde woman to appear out of nowhere, her limbs flailing a little as she gained her balance and barely avoided toppling face-first into one of the seats.

They've killed me, the Doctor thought for a mad second. They've grabbed me while my back was turned and thrown me out like they said, and I'm dead, and this is some kind of odd heaven that I never believed in or thought I could possibly have earned.

"Doctor," the woman breathed.

"Rose," he returned automatically, frozen in place. He honestly hadn't thought his feet would feel so heavy when he was dead.

"What?" someone behind the Doctor asked.

"Oh, this just proves it. He's in on it. What more proof do we need? He's in league with people who just appear out of thin air, for god's –"

"Who's she?"

"How are all these things getting inside? The cabin's supposed to be closed off. If they can get in, what about us? What about the air? What about –"

The Doctor jerked around in the direction of the frantic overlapping voices to see the shocked and still-angry expressions of his fellow passengers and would-be murderers. Somehow he didn't think that they'd figure into his afterlife unless it was a kind of personal hell, and how could Rose possibly be there? Which meant he was still in the Crusader vehicle. Which meant they hadn't thrown him out after all. Which meant he wasn't dead. Which meant ...

He whipped back around. "Rose!" he cried, barely getting the word out before being nearly tackled by a streak of pink and yellow and blue. He might have been in too much shock to move, but Rose clearly wasn't interested in wasting another second on useless inaction. Fair enough. At least one of them had learned from their experience on Dårlig Ulv Stranden.

"Finally," she said, her words muffled by the fabric of his suit being pressed against her mouth. "Oh god, finally. I've come so far ..."

He was loathe to give a moment's thought to anything but her in that moment. He'd be quite content to spend the rest of his days just taking her in, contemplating being in the same space as her. But the Doctor had a brilliant mind that could think of multiple things at once, even when one of those things was as huge and encompassing as Rose being right there, in his arms, when he'd thought he could never touch her again. And at that moment, one of the other non-Rose-related things of which he couldn't help but be aware was that they were in a small enclosed space with a bunch of frightened humans who seemed to have a serious desire to see him dead.

Sort of sobered the mind, that.

It wasn't unfamiliar territory, he'd admit, but ignoring them for too long could be hazardous to his health. Not to mention Rose's. Because Rose was _there_. Somewhere in his mind he was still scared out of his wits to be stuck in this situation, especially now that Rose was at risk as well, but that still wasn't enough to stop a face-splitting grin from breaking out.

"Rose Tyler, I've _missed_ you. So much. But we're about to be attacked by an angry mob."

"What, again? Nice to know things with you haven't changed too much."

His grin widened, if possible, as he reluctantly detached his body from her. Except for their hands. He couldn't bear to let go of that hand that still fit his so well, as if no time had passed since the last time they'd grasped each other.

"What's going on?" Biff shouted, directing the Doctor's full attention to him.

"Who are you people?" Val cried.

In his peripheral vision, the Doctor saw Rose's head jerk involuntarily to the right slightly, as if she'd gone to look behind her. A slight frown formed on her face. He realised that she was subconsciously picking up on the echo in the room, though she had no idea yet just what was going on, or what it meant for the two of them.

"We're old friends," the Doctor responded. "Like I said before, travellers. We got separated and Rose found a way to get to me. It's a complete coincidence that it happened here and now. It's nothing to do with what's happening here, I swear."

"What is happening here?" Rose asked. "Where are we?"

"We're on a bus on a planet called Midnight, and –" the Doctor began before being interrupted.

"Oh, like we're going to believe you don't know exactly what's happening!" Val exclaimed. "Like we're just going to take your word for it."

"No, really, I haven't got a clue what's going on," Rose said to Val. "I tried to send a message through," she added, turning to address the Doctor. "I made contact long enough to see that you were here, and get the timespace co-ordinates of this place. There's this thing, a bit like an early version of a Time Agent's Vortex Manipulator. We set it and it hurled me through to here, and what on Earth is that noise?"

Rose spun around fully this time. "It's like this echo, like ..." She trailed off as she caught sight of Sky, with her wild eyes and her synchronised lips. Sky trailed off with her. "What's she ... Doctor?" A slightly scared tremble made its way into Rose's voice.

Right, the Doctor thought, at least everyone was equally scared now. Though it was slightly comforting to know that Rose, at least, wasn't going to start up some idiocy about throwing people out of an airlock. She was better than that.

He might occasionally, like earlier, wonder why he took up with humans. Then people like Rose Tyler came along and reminded him.

"She's talking with me," Rose said. "How ..."

"She's talking with all of us!" an angry voice rang out from behind her.

"What is it? Is it some psychic thing, or ..."

"I don't know what's happening," the Doctor admitted. He looked around at the others. "But I can figure it out. I just need more time."

"We haven't got time," the Hostess snapped. "If that rescue vehicle arrives and we haven't figured this out, they'll take her back to the Leisure Palace. What if this thing spreads, Doctor? We can't take that chance."

"I've already told you, we can't just kill her!"

"Who's killing anyone?" Rose asked. Her eyes were still trained almost unwillingly on Sky, as if she was watching a space ship collision being acted out in slow-motion, powerless both to stop it and to look away.

"We have to get rid of her. What if we all get infected? Better to deal with one person now than have everyone die because we waited," the Hostess insisted.

"I'm not waiting about to be taken over by some creature, or whatever it is," Biff agreed. "And if you stand in my way ..."

"You'll throw me out too, I heard," the Doctor muttered.

That was enough to make Rose whirl back around. "_What_?" she burst out incredulously. "No one's throwing you out. Or anyone. What are you lot on about? Is everyone in here on drugs, or what?"

"You," Val said nastily. "_You_ can just stop talking. I don't know who or what you are, but I know you're in on this. You and him both."

"It's like they planned it," the Professor said. "How else could she have known how to get in here?"

"How did you know where we were?" the Hostess chimed in. "We're not even on the usual path. How could you have known where we'd be?"

Rose shook her head. "It's complicated."

"Oh, don't give us that!" said Val. "You're as bad as he is, thinking you're above us. Like we're too stupid to understand the same things you can or something."

"I didn't mean it like that," Rose bit out. Her frustration and confusion were obvious. The Doctor didn't blame her for that at all. He felt the same, and at least he had more information about what was going on than she did.

"What, then? Are you going to go on about us 'humans' like you're not one of us, like he's been doing? He's been lording it above us since this all started."

"He's nine hundred years old and the smartest man in the universe, what do you expect!"

"Rose," the Doctor said warningly, too late to stop her. Any support he might have still somehow been clinging onto among the passengers was gone in an instant. Even once they'd managed to travel out among the stars, human xenophobia somehow hung on for millions of years. He knew Rose hadn't meant to – she couldn't have known how badly humans could react, having only really discussed the issue with the tiny percent of the population who were easy-going, like Jack Harkness. Nonetheless, she'd thrown the flame on the pyre these people had already been building.

"Nine hundred?" Dee Dee repeated, shocked.

"He's alien, then, got to be," Jethro said in dawning recognition. "Like that thing that's controlling Mrs Silvestry. They _are_ together."

His last ally, gone.

"No," Rose cried, "but he's not like that! You need him. He's the only one who can –"

"Rose," the Doctor said once again, shaking his head slightly when she looked at him. It wasn't going to help to keep arguing. The damage was done.

"He keeps saying that we need him as well, but where's the proof?" the Professor challenged. "He's just been repeating himself, even more than she has!"

"Telling us how much better he is than us," Val confirmed. "The Professor's the expert here!"

"Mum, stop, just look ..." Jethro said.

"You keep out of this, Jethro."

"No, really, look at her!" Jethro said, pointing to Sky.

"She's stopped," Dee Dee said.

"What do you mean, stopped?" Rose asked. "What's she even _doing_? Who is she?"

"She's not repeating you anymore," Val said, eyeing Rose. "Nor me now! Look!"

"She was never 'repeating' me. What are you on about? She was talking _with me_," Rose said.

"But when did she ... No, she hasn't stopped. Look, she's still doing it," the Doctor said, still echoed by Sky.

"But when I was talking – there, see!" Rose exclaimed triumphantly. "She's stopped it, whatever _it_ is."

"It's just him," Dee Dee said. "See, she's not doing me either. It's just the Doctor."

"Mrs Silvestry," the Doctor and Sky said in unison. "What are you doing?"

"Has she really ... yes, she's let me go too!" Biff's voice sounded relieved.

"She's let all of us go but him," confirmed the Hostess.

"Look at the way she's looking at him," Val pointed out, not sounding half as relieved as her husband. "Those eyes. They won't stop looking at him, following him."

The Doctor shuddered in acknowledgement. Those eyes, trained solely on him, ignoring everything else in the room, were more than just a little disconcerting. "Sky, stop it!"

"Why you?" the Professor asked. "It's like you're connected. How do you explain it, Doctor, if you're not in it together?"

"The cleverest voice in the room," the Doctor murmured. "Got to be. Why else single me out?"

"Is it my fault?" Rose asked, sounding appalled. "All that stuff I was sayin' about you being the smartest and all, is that why?"

"Rose, no. It's not your fault, I promise."

Rose was watching Sky, not him, as he said it. He didn't think she'd heard him. "She's using your voice, and I did that," she whispered.

"Rose, no."

"Oh god. What is she? Or it? Is there something inside her, is that it? What does it do? What if it takes over _you_? Think of what it could do."

That, unfortunately, was not something he could disagree with.

Sky had picked out his voice, and his alone. Whatever the thing controlling her had planned, it couldn't be good. He felt the sort of foreboding he hadn't felt since he was on the Game Station years ago.

He couldn't let that thing take him over. If it could access his knowledge, and gain his access to the TARDIS, the universe could crumble as a result.

"Rose," the Doctor began pleadingly, Sky's copied intonation somehow giving it even more of a sense of urgency. "The device you used to get here. Is it still working?"

"What d'you mean?" Rose asked.

"Can you use it to get back to where you came from?" he elaborated. "Use it to get out of here?"

"Well, yeah," Rose said. "But obviously I'm not going to. I've _finally_ got back to you. You don't know what it's been like, how long ..."

"You can try again," the Doctor and Sky said together. "I believe in you, Rose. I still can't get back to you from this side of the Void – whatever's allowing you across must be based in the parallel world, is my best guess. So it's up to you. I know you won't give up. You'll find me again."

"Not if you die here in this room," Rose said. The Doctor could see her jaw setting stubbornly.

"Rose ..." he said.

If he was being kind to himself, he'd blame the fact that Sky was speaking with him for how she paid absolutely no heed to him. Much like with the passengers, her repetition of his words seemed to take all authority away from them.

The truth of it, though, was that Rose Tyler had never really listened to him. Not about things like this. She was just stubborn that way. Usually he admired that. Right now, he just wished she'd do as he said without question.

"Just don't," she said. "I'm not leaving you, and that's the end of it. I told you I'd stay with you forever and I will. You just watch me. We're not dying here, either of us."

The Doctor sighed. "I missed you," he admitted, "even your obstinacy. And, Rose, I never thought I'd be saying it to you like this, surrounded by strangers and with someone else saying it along in time with me. But you need to know. Rose Tyler, I –"

"_Don't_ you even think about saying it like that!" Rose interrupted, her jaw clenching. "Like it means goodbye or something. Just don't even. I haven't waited this long for that."

The Doctor held her gaze silently. Whatever the outcome, he had to deal with the problem. They were all in danger. Rose was in danger. He had to do what he could to fix it.

No matter what.

The Doctor tried to say his next words quietly enough that only Rose would hear, but Sky's voice spoken in unison with his, not dropping in volume at all, made that impossible. "I don't think it can be a coincidence that this thing, whatever it is, has shifted all of its attention to me. If that thing takes over me, like it's done with Sky, you have to promise me something. They'll try to throw me out of the vehicle. I need you to use that device and leave me. Rose, I need you to _let_ them."

"No!" Rose exclaimed. "No, I can't. Doctor, no."

"Please. You said it yourself. You know what could happen. I can't let it. It'll go after the TARDIS, and what's the first thing standing in its way? Rose, it'd kill you, and then likely destroy the rest of the universe soon after."

"Doctor ..."

The Doctor cupped her face with his palm. Then, unable to stand seeing her obvious distress any longer, he broke away from her reach, walking back down the aisle closer to Sky. 

* * *

"Sky," Rose heard the Doctor and Sky both saying as the Doctor kneeled in front of the still woman. "Please listen to me. I want to understand you. I want to help you. Please, I can help you exist without having to steal life from others, if that's what you want. You don't have to hurt anyone."

"Just let me help," Sky said.

"Just let me help," the Doctor mirrored.

"Doctor?" Rose cried out, alarmed.

"Did she ..."

"She spoke first."

Rose blocked out the noise behind her. "Doctor, why are you doing that? What's happening?"

"It's letting me go," the Doctor said, but only after Sky had said the exact same thing.

A strangled sob broke out of Rose's throat as she dashed to the Doctor's side and shook him by the shoulders. "Doctor! Doctor! Please, say something. You can't do this to me! Not now!"

"You really shouldn't touch him," someone called out from behind her.

"No chance!" Rose said, dragging the Doctor's hand into her own and squeezing as if her life depended on her grip. She wasn't letting go this time. She was staying right there with the Doctor, and that was that.

Stupid alien! Stupid _man_! He acted as if he was so smart all the time, but look at the idiotic situations he got himself (and her) into.

"I think it's moved," Sky said.

Rose shook her head in denial as the Doctor said it too. The same words, the same intonation, just a second or so behind. They weren't the Doctor's words at all.

She could see his wide eyes, almost lifeless but for the vaguest shadow of terror. She knew it was too late.

"Look at me, I can move. I can feel again. I'm coming back to life."

Rose looked away from the Doctor for the first time, finally able to focus once again on what was happening around her.

"And look at him," Sky said. "He can't move. Help me. Get me away from him. Please."

Rose frowned at her, and Sky just looked at her emotionlessly. What was happening? Rose didn't know enough, hadn't seen how it had happened. Sky wasn't talking at the same time as the Doctor now, but she didn't seem like she was suddenly all right, back to acting like a normal human woman. And clearly the Doctor was about as far from all right as he could be. Was the thing branching out? Taking over more than one of them at once instead of passing from person to person like the Doctor had feared it might once it got a grip on him?

"What are you doing?" Rose asked the Professor as he took Sky's hand. "Look what she's done to the Doctor! You can't trust her."

"It wasn't her," the Professor said, sounding like he needed to convince himself of his own words but just couldn't quite manage it. "There was something in her, and now it's in him. This was how it started. Mrs Silvestry was repeating us and couldn't move. Then she was repeating at the same time. Now he's doing it."

"But what about her talking right along with us? The Doctor isn't doing that!"

"Yet," the Hostess said.

"It's obviously in him now, don't you see?" Biff said. "I said it was him, didn't I? It's moved to him, like it was obviously going to do all along."

"You said I was in on it too, remember?" Rose shot back angrily. "And I'm telling you right now, I don't have a clue what's going on!"

"It was using me," Sky said.

"It was using me."

"It wanted to get to him," Sky continued.

"It wanted to get to him."

"It sought him out, but it had to go through me."

"It sought him out, but it had to go through me."

"It was so cold."

"It was so cold."

"I was so scared."

"I was so scared."

"And what about now," Rose interrupted. "You were scared. All right, I believe you. Anyone would be. But then you got possessed by some alien, and now, what, you're somehow the calmest person in the room? What's with that?"

"Leave her alone," Val ordered, "she's probably still in shock. Come here, we've got you," she said to Sky in a motherly sort of voice. "You're safe now."

"I wouldn't touch her either," Dee Dee said cautiously. "We don't know ..."

"But it's gone," Biff argued, "she's clean. It passed into him."

"That's not what happened," Dee Dee insisted.

"Yes, thank you!" Rose said. "I don't know what's going on, but you can't tell me that she's suddenly fine." Rose gestured to Sky. "Maybe whatever this thing is it's affecting the Doctor, yeah, but it hasn't let her go either. This is something else."

"First it repeats, then it synchronises, then it goes onto the next stage," Dee Dee said. "That's what the Doctor said."

"You're going to believe _him_?" Biff asked incredulously.

"No, but it makes sense, doesn't it?"

"You're on their side, too!" Val said viciously.

"No! I'm not!"

"You're defending them. Those two brought this on us, and you're defending them!" Val said.

Dee Dee backed away. "I'm not. I'm _not_." She clammed up, clearly too afraid to continue to stand against them.

Well, Rose thought, there went the only other voice of reason. Looked like it was up to her. As usual.

It was just as well she'd had a lot of practice saving lives.

"He said it himself," Jethro said. "The Doctor, he said that he couldn't risk it if it took him over. He said it to her, and I heard it."

"He told her to let us throw him out," Val agreed.

"There we are, then," Biff said. "Even _he_ thinks we should do it."

"No, but that was if it took over his mind. Like, if it _became_ him. But that's not what happened!" Rose argued. "He's just repeating her!"

"Exactly," the Professor said. "The repeating proves that it's in him now."

"You need to listen," Rose said, trying to sound as patient and reasonable as possible. "All throwing him out is going to do will be to get rid of the one person who can figure this out."

"He hasn't done anything but make it worse!" Val accused.

"It wanted him, so it could travel the stars," Sky said.

"It wanted him, so it could travel the stars," the Doctor repeated.

"Wipe out the humans."

"Wipe out the humans."

"Expand across the universe."

"Expand across the universe."

"You're next."

"You're next."

"It'll kill all of you."

"It'll kill all of you."

"Rip you out, into the dark, and the cold, and the diamonds."

"Rip you out, into the dark, and the cold, and the diamonds."

"Shut up," Rose said to Sky. "You're lying. It's not him."

"Stop him. Biff, love, you have to stop him from talking," Val begged. "I can't take it. He's saying such awful things."

"But it's her!" Rose said, desperate.

"She is the one saying it," Dee Dee agreed. "He's just repeating."

"But that's what the thing does, it repeats!"

"She's the one," the Hostess said quietly. Rose looked at her, entreating. If only another person or two would get on her side, she'd have a chance.

"It's him! I can see it, he's possessed, it's him!" Val yelled.

"It's not possessing him, it's draining him!" Dee Dee countered.

"She's got his voice ..." the Hostess breathed.

"Yes!" Rose said. "Listen to them! You're wrong. You're going to kill an innocent man."

"Innocent!" Val scoffed. "He wasn't innocent even before it took him over."

"This isn't some conspiracy," Rose said.

"But you would say that, if you were in on it," the Professor said.

"I'm not your enemy, I swear," Rose said.

"That's how he does it," Sky said with a dark smile.

"That's how he does it."

"He makes you fight ... creeps into your head ... and whispers."

"He makes you fight ... creeps into your head ... and whispers."

"That's him, inside."

"That's him, inside."

"Get him out of my head!" Val cried.

"He's not _in_ your head," Rose said. "She's just saying that."

"We should throw him out," Biff said, suddenly sounding even more resolute than ever.

"Well, don't just talk about it, do something!" Val ordered.

"I will," Biff nodded. "You watch me. I'm gonna throw him out."

Screw trying to be reasonable, Rose decided. That wasn't getting her anywhere with this lot. Reason had clearly fled long before she'd ever arrived in the room. A bunch of human beings in a panic; she'd seen what that sort of hysteria could do.

"Over my dead body," Rose growled loudly.

"I can live with that," Biff replied. "You can go first, if you like."

"Stop it!" Dee Dee cried as Biff grabbed Rose around the middle. "Just stop it!"

"She came out of nowhere, you saw," said Val. "She's with him. She's probably not human either. And now here she is protecting him. Helping him get past our defences so he can kill us all. It's them or us!"

Rose got just enough leverage to break away from Biff. In the moment before he was on her again she saw the Doctor's face. The terror was much more obvious this time. Though he didn't look at her – couldn't – Rose somehow knew that his fear was more for her than for himself.

Don't worry, Doctor, Rose thought. I didn't travel across universes for it to end like this.

She raked at Biff's face with her nails as he tried once more to haul her down the aisle to the emergency exit door. He shouted in pain and tightened his grip on her.

"I don't think we should do this!" the Hostess said.

"Oh, shut up," Val said. "What use have you been?"

"They're together," Sky said.

"They're together," the Doctor confirmed.

"She's with him."

"She's with him."

"You have to stop her."

"You have to stop her."

"You have to get rid of both of them."

"You have to get rid of both of them."

"You see! We've got to. Professor, help me," Biff grunted.

"I can't," the Professor said. "She's just a girl. I can't ..."

"Well grab that Doctor, then!" Biff said. "Come on! Jethro, help him. Come on!"

"Get them out," Val pushed. "Throw both of them out, now!"

"Stop it!" Rose cried as the Professor tried to awkwardly drag the Doctor down the aisle by his arm. "Leave him alone!"

"I want them out! Hurry up!" Val yelled.

"He travels across the universe and saves whole planets and makes people better, and you're going to kill him because you won't ... just ... _listen_!" Rose screamed, still thrashing around enough to give Biff a few bruises. But he was just so much larger and more solid than she was, and the exit door was getting closer and closer.

"Cast them out!" Sky said.

"Cast them out!" the Doctor repeated, muffled, as his face was at that moment being dragged along the carpeted floor of the aisle.

"Do it now!" Sky said.

"Do it now."

Rose saw Jethro move in and grab the Doctor under the armpits, which was much more effective than the Professor's half-hearted attempts to pull him along.

"That's the way!" Sky encouraged.

"That's the way!"

"Shut up!" Rose shrieked. "Can you hear it? It's her! Listen to what she's saying! How she's saying it!"

"You can do it!" Sky said, heedless of Rose's protests.

Rose was slammed against the wall beside the exit door and held there by Biff as the Doctor said, "You can do it!"

"Molto bene!"

"Molto bene!"

"Allons-y!"

"Allons-y!"

"That's his word!" Rose yelled.

"Shut her up, Biff," Val said. "She's as bad as him. I can't stand it. Get them out! Both of them!"

Biff covered Rose's mouth with the palm of his hand. Rose bit down, seeing her last chance to talk them into some semblance of sanity being snatched away from her. Biff reared back slightly from the pain, his arm losing contact with her body, and Rose took her moment.

She ducked out from under Biff's arm and took the few steps between herself and the Doctor at a stagger. Before the boy or the older man could stop her, Rose yanked the device off her wrist and slapped it around the Doctor's. She pushed down the recall button, signalling to the crew at the other end to bring her back.

Or rather, to bring the Doctor back now.

"I'm sorry," she said in the few seconds it took the device to work. "You're too important."

The Doctor faded from sight right in front of her, taking her only means of escape with him. It was worth it, she thought. Even if she died here and now, it was worth it to save the Doctor.

For the first time, Rose thought she really understood what had been going through the Doctor's mind all those times he'd tried to send her away to save her. Not that she wasn't still pissed at him for doing it, of course.

"She's made him disappear!" Val exclaimed.

"And here I thought you wanted him gone," Rose mocked.

"We have to get her out before she does that to us as well. Who knows where she sent him."

Rose crawled back into the space between two sets of seats and wrapped her arms around the bolted down leg of one chair. "Just try it, lady," she said. "It'll take every single one of you to make me move an inch."

She remembered a time – such a long time ago – when she hadn't been able to hold on when it really mattered. Catch her going through that again.

Biff, still cradling his injured hand against his chest, made a move towards her. Thankfully, he was the only one who did. Rose tensed up, prepared to kick him if he got too close.

It didn't come to that, because everyone was suddenly distracted by a thump and a sort of weak keening noise coming from up the other end of the aisle. Sky had fallen to the ground.

"Mrs Silvestry!" the Professor exclaimed, recovering enough to move to help her.

"Don't," Rose said. "It's not her. It was never her. That's what I was trying to tell you. The thing inside her didn't move to the Doctor."

"It was using him," Dee Dee chimed in behind her.

"How can we take your word for it?" Val asked. "You appear out of nowhere, and that Doctor disappears into thin air, and all of it in the middle of some alien possessing people. You can't tell me you're not responsible for it all."

"Shut up," Rose said tiredly. "For God's sake, just shut up and _listen_. Whatever you do to me, you need to know that she," Rose said, jerking her chin to indicate in Sky's direction, "isn't safe. You can't just pretend this didn't happen and let her go free out of here. There's no telling what that thing might do out in the universe."

"What d'you mean?" Jethro asked. "If she's still possessed, why isn't she doing something now? She looks like she's in shock. Which, well, wouldn't _you_ be if you'd been possessed by an alien?"

"Actually, I have been possessed by aliens before, thanks. Bit of a hazard of my job back home. This is different to the after-effects of possession. I don't know what's happened to her," Rose admitted. "I don't know how this particular creature works. Even if I'd been here for all of it, I still might not know. Even the Doctor didn't seem too sure of the details. But if I had to guess, I'd say that she was linked closely to the Doctor, drawing energy or life or something from him. You saw it. He couldn't move or speak for himself or anything."

"That's because the thing was inside him," Biff said angrily.

"No, but she was right earlier," the Hostess said. "Mrs Silvestry was using words that that Doctor said earlier, before any of this had started. That thing she said, the Doctor said it to me. Said it's French for 'let's go'.

"Allons-y," Rose said. "It's something he said to me, before we were separated. He liked it."

"It was his voice," the Hostess continued. "She'd taken his voice."

"And when I sent the Doctor away, that connection snapped," Rose said. "But I don't think it'll stop her forever. She was talking along with all of us earlier. She's going to recover, and then ..."

"She's going to hone in on one of us now?" Dee Dee asked.

There was silence for a moment.

"We need to throw her out," the Hostess said, sounding strangely calm now despite the fact that she was talking about murder. "There's no quarantine on the Leisure Palace. We couldn't contain her. And she clearly doesn't need to be in contact with anyone to affect them, so who knows how wide her reach is. The staff members in the main area aren't prepared for this sort of thing."

"What's even out there?" Rose asked. She'd picked up that it was not good from the fact that the Doctor had seemed to think it spelled death to be thrown out into it, but she thought she should at least know what they were talking about if plans of murder were going to be tossed about.

"Xtonic sunlight," the Professor answered. "Nothing should be able to survive out there. Certainly not Mrs Silvestry. But the thing must have been living out there. I thought it was impossible, but there's no other explanation. It came in from outside."

"You realise you're talking about killing her," Rose warned, but it was half-hearted by then. Rose didn't want to kill someone, or even the something inside the woman necessarily either, but she'd seen what the creature could do. They couldn't let it loose. And maybe, just maybe, if the Doctor managed to get back in time, he could do something about it. But he hadn't been able to do anything so far, and Rose couldn't be sure how accurately even he could make the wrist device work, so the creature might have taken someone else over by the time he got back to them. It was really too big of an 'if'.

And Rose somehow got the feeling that there was no coming back from this for poor Mrs Silvestry, no matter what they did to the thing inside. She seemed like nothing more than a shell, now, whoever she'd been before.

It was the sort of decision she'd sometimes been confronted with when she was working for Torchwood. It was also the sort of decision that the Doctor tried very hard to avoid having to make. Rose thought of the gun that was holstered to her back. Even in the worst moments, she had never given a thought to using it against these people to defend herself. But she still carried it. There had been times in her life since the Doctor that the threat of a gun trained on her enemy had been the only thing that kept her alive. It was certainly the only protection she had while she was travelling from parallel to parallel with very little idea what to expect each time she arrived in a new destination.

The Doctor wouldn't agree with that, though. He hated guns. She couldn't be sure how he'd feel about her carrying it. Did he value her safety enough to make moral concessions like that? She didn't know.

She did know, though, that she was glad he wasn't here to see this. _This_ he wouldn't agree with, no matter what. He wouldn't be willing to kill Sky now, before she could do any more damage, because with a life like his he had to believe in the tiny glimmers of possibility that the woman could still be saved without anyone else getting hurt. Right now she was harmless, after all. They had just a little bit of time to think of a way to help her. But Rose didn't know what to do, and the Doctor wasn't there. Preventative measures were never the Doctor's forte, but Rose had been through enough to know that sometimes they were necessary.

Still, there was one thing she could do to that the Doctor might agree with. She could give the creature a choice.

"I'm going to get up, now," Rose told everyone. "I need to go over and talk to Sky – the creature – whatever – for a moment. I'm going to try to reason with it."

"Didn't do the Doctor much good," Dee Dee said.

"Yeah," Rose agreed, "I know. But I need to give it one last chance, because otherwise we'll have to ... And I really don't fancy being thrown out the door just because one of you gets twitchy, so I need you all to stand back a bit and let me past. Okay?"  
She stood up and cautiously passed down the aisle through the group of people, expecting strong hands to grab at her at any second to pull her back towards that exit door, and the death that clearly awaited her beyond it. The death to which she'd be condemning Sky if she couldn't successfully reason with the creature.

"Sky?" Rose called as she kneeled as close to the woman as possible without making contact with her. "I'm talking to the thing possessing Sky. If you don't leave that body, we're going to have to throw that woman you're occupying out into certain death. I'm asking you to leave Sky alone and go back to living your life outside. You can clearly survive out there, but she can't. She doesn't need to die. You could be merciful. That might be enough to convince scientists to find a way for you to have a body and a voice, given time. We could help you. But not if you don't help us first."

Sky was silent. It certainly beat the insanity-inducing repeating/talking-alongside thing she'd been doing earlier, but all the same, _some_ response would have been optimal.

"Please," Rose begged. "I don't want to do this, but if you don't leave we'll have no choice. We can't leave you to hurt anyone else. Just let her go."

Sky's eyes were focused on Rose. Though they were abnormally wild-looking, Rose could tell that Sky, or rather the thing inside, was comprehending her. And yet it didn't make any move to follow her request.

Rose nodded to herself regretfully and stood. "It's not going to do it," she announced to the others.

"The rescue can't be too far off," Jethro said. "Can't we just wait ..."

"I told you," the Hostess said, "the Leisure Palace is not equipped for this. It can't be allowed to leave the bus."

"I can't do it," the Professor said. "She's not doing anything now. She's not hurting anyone. I can't kill her."

"Nor me," Dee Dee said.

"I'll do it," Rose said, attempting to stop her voice from breaking. Again and again, she thought to herself, she was faced with this. Sometimes she really did wish for a different life. "If I'm going to let this happen, I'll damn well accept full responsibility for it. It's not like I'm going to sleep any better if I just sit back and watch someone else murder her."

Rose could feel tears running down her cheeks as she took a hold of Sky and attempted to pull her down the aisle, towards the door that only a few minutes ago was about to be the end of her life. It was awkward, as Rose wasn't particularly physically strong, and she was exhausted from the earlier struggle.

The Hostess put a hand on Rose's shoulder almost reassuringly, then grabbed Sky under one arm. Rose shifted her grip to under the other. The others, including those who had been so quick to jump in earlier when it had been Rose and the Doctor being thrown out, merely got out of the way.

The hysteria had worn off, Rose realised. Since the Doctor had disappeared and Sky had stopped whatever she'd been doing, they'd all had a moment to breathe and really consider the consequences of their actions. They were back to acting rationally again, rather than just following that oh-so-human need to survive at all costs. Of course they didn't want any part of it. Nor did she. But she had to do it. And she respected the Hostess for making a stand and helping her, even as she hated the other woman a little for suggesting it in the first place.

She'd been right, of course, but that didn't mean Rose had to like it.

It was Rose who pushed the button to open the door, but she couldn't quite bring herself to shove another person out into the bright sunlight. That was done by the Hostess, who then slammed her hand down on the door seal to close off the exit.

Rose sat down exactly where she'd stood, practically crumpling in on herself, and cried softly for Sky Silvestry. 

* * *

Rose wasn't exactly surprised to recognise Donna Noble waiting in what she'd been told was the 'Leisure Palace' when she departed the rescue vehicle. She was well aware that Donna was travelling with the Doctor – this version of the Doctor, that was, not necessarily the ones in some of the parallels she'd come across – at this point in time. Still, somehow Rose found herself slightly unprepared to actually face her.

She knew Donna Noble's possible future, which made the prospect of talking to her now, and maybe getting attached to her, a difficult one.

Of course, she knew the Doctor's _definite_ future and didn't let _that_ get in her way, but it was way too late to avoid attachment there.

Donna was looking around, seeming worried. Obviously she'd somehow learned that something had gone wrong on the trip that those people had been taking across the planet. Even more obviously, she was now searching for the Doctor.

"Donna," Rose greeted.

"Do I know you?" Donna asked, eyes focusing on Rose for just a moment before returning to their task of glancing around.

"No, not yet. But I know you. Or, at least, I will. Or you will. Or something. It's confusing."

"You sound just like my friend," Donna said. Then she stopped and her widening eyes darted back to look at Rose. "Oh, wait. Not _again_, surely. We _just_ went through this. Honestly, it's just like that River Song woman all over again, isn't it? Can't the Doctor just meet people in the right order for once? And what, does he have a woman in every time and place, or what?"

Rose frowned slightly, feeling the familiar stirrings of jealousy. River Song. That was ... well, not something she wanted to have to deal with just now, anyway. There were more important things to think about for now.

"Hazards of time travel," Rose said instead. "But don't worry, the Doctor has definitely met me already. We used to travel together. It's just that I haven't really met _you_ yet in your timeline. Although ... I think there might have been this one time, at an accident scene. Something about keys. Has _that_ happened to you? Only, it's difficult to keep track of which universe I'm in at any given time."

Donna gaped at her. "You! It was you! I thought you looked familiar. Or that jacket does, at least. Kind of sticks in the mind, that. I mean, fake blue leather, _really_? And God, don't tell me you're like him, with the never changing your clothes."

"Not usually. But it's been a _long_ week or so for me, jumping all across the universes. You wouldn't even believe me if I told you half the things I've seen. I've barely had time to eat, let alone change clothes. Or shower. A shower would be fantastic."

"Where did you come from, then?"

Rose smiled sadly. "Far away, Donna Noble. Far away."

Donna shook her head impatiently. "You said you know the Doctor, so you can't tell me it's a coincidence that you were on the same bus he was on, and that now I can't find him."

"Not a coincidence, no. I was looking for him, and I found him finally. Don't worry," Rose reassured her. "He's fine. It wasn't safe for him to stay on the bus, so he had to take a little detour. But he's brilliant. He'll find his way here in no time. He'll work the system out a lot faster than the guys and I did on our own."

"You were looking for him. And you've shown up where we were before. What are you, stalking him? How can I be sure that he even knows you? What's your name?"

Rose shrugged. "You might not recognise my name even if I told it to you. He doesn't always mention the people he's travelled with. There've been dozens and dozens, you know. I think it's painful for him to constantly remember all of them. And I don't even know how long it's been for him, anyway. He might have had loads of travelling companions since me."

"He does talks about some of them," Donna pressed. "I've even met one or two. Just tell me your name and we'll see if I recognise it. We can go from there."

"I can't," Rose said. "I can't tell you my name. Or, I don't know, maybe I finally can now that I'm in the right time and place. I don't want to risk it, though; I've seen paradoxes before, and they're not pretty. The wrong word in the wrong place ... The Doctor will know how much I can tell you. We'll have to wait for him."

"What are you talking about?" Donna exclaimed. "You time travellers don't talk anything but rubbish, do you? You and River and especially _him_. Goin' on and on about paradoxes and nexuses and all sorts. Is that what I'm going to be like after spending a few years with him?"

"He does tend to rub off on you a little," Rose said, bestowing a small smile on her.

"Fine, all right," said Donna. "I've had it about up to here with people being evasive about knowing each other, but the Doctor's explained a few things about time travel to me, so fine. But you still haven't told me where he is. And you can't tell me that's going to cause problems."

"Actually ..."

"Look here, girly, if you don't tell me –"

"He really is fine," Rose assured her. "He'll tell you the story himself when he's back. No doubt he's off showing the Torchwood team how much more magnificent than them he is. Probably completely reassembling equipment that it took us years to build in a few minutes flat. He'll be along shortly."

"And what, we just wait? With you not telling me anything about yourself? For all I know, you killed him on that bus."

Rose flinched slightly – hopefully imperceptibly – remembering that she had in fact been party to a murder on that bus. Not the Doctor's, granted, but still. It wouldn't do to tell Donna that. Not when she needed the other woman to trust her. "Donna, I give you my word that he's alive and well. That's all I can do for now."

At that, they'd clearly reached something of a stalemate. The silence that fell between them once that fact had been ascertained was, to say the least, awkward.

It was just as well, then, that it didn't take the Doctor very long at all to appear. He just popped into existence five feet away from Rose, not even stumbling in the slightest, as if travel through time and space between universes without a TARDIS was a daily occurrence for him.

"You stupid, _stupid_ girl," the Doctor said roughly. "I thought they'd have killed you."

Not really the heartfelt words she'd hoped for now that the trouble was over, but she'd take what she could get.

"Who's the idiot who gave them all permission to throw him to his death, then?" she returned.

The Doctor promptly took several steps towards her and shut her up with his lips.

It was biting and borderline punishing, but Rose was just fine with that. She wanted to feel it, and a slight bruising of the lips would just be a testament she could look back on later to remind her that they were finally together again. The way it should be.

"What on Earth is wrong with you two?" Donna said, interrupting their moment. "You might as well be talking in code, for all the sense either of you is making. And is that the way you say hello to everyone you've met somewhere before?" she asked the Doctor. "You're just lucky you didn't try that on with me!"

The Doctor turned back to her, though he didn't let Rose go. "Donna Noble," he said, "meet Rose Tyler. Please don't fight."

"_Rose_?" Donna gasped, staring at Rose as if she was an exhibit in a zoo before looking back to the Doctor. "Your Rose? 'Her name is Rose' Rose?" She glared at Rose, then. "Well, why didn't you just say so, you silly girl? We could've skipped all of that worrying that you'd murdered him business."

"He did talk about me, then," Rose said, relieved. To find out that he'd kept his promise not to do to her what he'd done to Sarah Jane was comforting. Not to mention that she also felt oddly fortified by the idea that someone might think of her as _his_ Rose. Or maybe even that he might think that himself, even if he'd probably never say it.

She found herself in an odd group hug, as Donna threw her arms around the Doctor, and caught Rose in the embrace as well since the Doctor was still holding her tightly.

Well, Rose thought. That was a nice change compared to how Donna had been treating her earlier. She hadn't been able to do much at the time to reassure Donna of her identity and intentions, granted, but she hadn't liked the idea that she'd got off on the wrong foot with yet another person the Doctor cared about. Things with Sarah Jane had worked out in the end, but they'd wasted so much time at each others' throats. She didn't want to do that again.

When Donna pulled away, the Doctor moved away from Rose as well, though their hands remained joined.

Rose quickly categorised the look on Donna's face as domineering. Her mother had often directed a similar expression at her. Frankly, Rose understood why the Doctor had always been scared of Jackie, being reminded of the strength of that expression now.

"Right. Back to the TARDIS, then. You," Donna said, pointing at Rose, "better not even think of going anywhere, or I'll make the TARDIS chain you to the console. He's completely useless without you."

"Oi," the Doctor objected.

"Oh, you know it," Donna fobbed him off.

Rose tried to give them both a real, proper smile, really she did. But, well, it had been a very long time since she'd been properly happy, and having to do what she did earlier that day hardly helped. Even being with the Doctor once again wasn't quite enough, because there were so many secrets filling the gap between them that Rose felt constantly on edge in anticipation of him posing all the questions he must have. The questions she couldn't possibly begin to answer.

So when she did smile, it felt terribly strained.

Donna didn't notice that, apparently, because she smiled right back at Rose as if nothing was wrong. "Of course, I'd prefer that we avoided the whole chaining up thing. Because you and me? We're definitely going shopping after this, no matter what _he_ says. I've been trying to get in a decent shopping trip for months now, but he keeps steering us off course. Claims it's the TARDIS doing it, of course, but I don't believe it for a second."

"It's not my fault the TARDIS tends to aim more for places where I can help resolve universal peril than places where you can resolve your shoe deficit woes. And I do take you shopping!" the Doctor said. "Sometimes."

"For TARDIS parts!" Donna countered. "Oh, having another woman on board is going to be wizard! You don't know how hard I had to work just to get him to bring me to this leisure planet. Now, with two of us, we'll outnumber him."

"Who drives the TARDIS?" the Doctor asked.

"Not you, if the fact that we almost never land where we mean to is any indication," Donna teased. "It doesn't go both ways. You can't claim the TARDIS decides the locations one moment and then claim you're in charge the next."

The Doctor grumbled something under his breath.

They seemed so happy, Donna particularly, that Rose didn't quite want to spoil it by raining on the parade. But they didn't have all that much time, so she had to. And frankly, Donna's playfulness in the face of Rose's awareness of what was about to happen was making her just a little ill, knowing that it couldn't last.

"Er," Rose said, "not to spoil your plans, but there's this thing happening. The reason why I came back across universes, actually. The stars are going to go out. The other universe was running ahead of this one by a bit, and it's already happening there. But whatever was causing it was affecting all universes, and it originated here. Really soon in your personal timeline, I'd say. Though it's hard to tell."

"Yeah," the Doctor said, a shadowed look in his eyes. "Time differentials are tricky that way."

Rose froze and tried to meet the Doctor's eyes, but he kept them averted.

What exactly had he seen or been told while he was in the parallel universe?

She tried to draw some assurance from the fact that he hadn't let go of her hand.

"So, end of the universe?" Donna asked, her eyebrows raised.

"Pretty much, yeah," Rose agreed.

Donna rolled her eyes. "Of course. _He_ attracts trouble like no one I've ever met. Should've known that we couldn't even have a bit of retail therapy before having to run off and save the world."

She sounded put upon, but Rose could see a gleam in Donna's eyes that suggested that, much like Rose herself, Donna loved the part of life with the Doctor where they got into trouble, saved the universe and did a heck of a lot of running.

Rose thought she might grow to quite like this new woman in the Doctor's life, actually.

Rose was more resolved than ever to try to make sure Donna _stayed_ in the Doctor's life, then.

"Don't worry," Rose said. "The Doctor, Donna Noble and Rose Tyler in the TARDIS. End of the universe? No chance."

"Yep," the Doctor said, popping the 'p' sound. However, he didn't grin the way she was sure she remembered him always doing whenever he said that. It didn't seem right, him not smiling. It didn't seem right not being able to grin back in response either, actually.

"Right then," the Doctor said, moving to lead them (presumably) back to the TARDIS. "Better go make sure the universe is still in one piece. Fix the wrongs, all that."

"Sounds like you have a plan," Rose said.

"Me?" the Doctor replied. "Never! I don't even have a clue what's going on yet. No time for plans. Well, there never really is."

When the TARDIS came into view, Rose breathed in deeply, relishing the sight of it. She'd missed it almost as much as she'd missed the Doctor.

The Doctor finally let his intimate handhold with Rose fall away so that he could click his fingers with a flourish. The TARDIS doors swung open seemingly of their own accord, without so much as being touched. Rose looked to the Doctor with an eyebrow raised.

"Oh, honestly," Donna said with a hint of annoyance. "Ever since River told you that you could do that, you've been showing off. Don't you think it's getting a bit old?"

The Doctor's eyes flicked to Rose for a moment, and she recognised panic there. Rose knew that the idea of her finding out about River and having a jealous fit over it was a bit too domestic even for this Doctor, who was much better at that sort of thing than his predecessor. What he didn't know, however, was that Rose had a significantly better understanding of his relationship with River Song than he probably did at this stage in his timeline. But then, if she told him that, there'd be a lot more explanation necessary on her behalf. Not just about River, either.

So she let it slide for now. She would probably put that particular topic off for as long as she could, as a matter of fact. She might accept River Song's existence, and even her role in the Doctor's life, but she'd really prefer not to dwell on it. Not yet, anyway.

Donna walked into the TARDIS first, calling out behind her, "I'll just let you two have a bit of time on your own then, eh? No snogging in the console room, though! I'm making that a rule right now. I don't need to be stumbling in on that all the time. There's loads of rooms in the TARDIS for that sort of thing."

"Donna," the Doctor admonished half-heartedly.

He allowed Rose to follow Donna in, then entered the TARDIS himself. After he'd closed the door after him, he turned around and looked around the console room. Once he'd established that Donna, true to her word, had taken off, he turned to Rose.

"So," he said. "There I was expecting London in the early 21st century. Zeppelins everywhere and a newly-rebuilt Torchwood. So do you mind telling me why I ended up in Canada in the year 2463?"

Somehow Rose didn't think that Donna's 'no kissing in the console room' rule was going to be tested just yet.


	2. Chapter Two

Author's Notes: This chapter is a sort of AU of The Stolen Earth and Journey's End, but it's gone significantly AU by now and only touches on certain parts of those episodes. Credit to Russell T Davies, the writer of those episodes, for the few ideas I filched. 

* * *

Chapter Two

"D'you really think now is the time to have a deep-and-meaningful?" Rose asked. "With the whole of reality on the line?"

"This is a time machine, in case you've forgotten," the Doctor said. "Reality can wait a few minutes."

"I really don't think –"

"Rose," the Doctor interrupted somewhat austerely.

Well, so much for trying to reason with him. The set of his jaw alone was enough to tell her that even logic and the threat to life in the universe were not going to stop him from getting to the bottom of this latest mystery. Trust the Doctor to get his priorities all wrong.

"Fine," she sighed, "we'll talk. But this thing that's going to happen will happen _soon_. Well, in a way it's happening through all of time and space, and throughout all universes. Time ship or not, we don't have time to waste just standing around. So we can talk all you like. But while we're talking, I need you to build something."

"Build something," the Doctor repeated, sounding nonplussed.

"Yeah. A Z-Neutrino biological inversion catalyser, to be exact about it."

The Doctor looked like he'd been slapped. "A ... Rose, there are only two reasons to build a biological inversion device of any kind, let alone something of that magnitude, and neither of them are good."

"Doctor," Rose said firmly. "Please just do it."

"I can't be part of it," he said, shaking his head so hard that she wondered if he was trying to shake the taint of the thought right out of him.

"I just need you to do this one thing," Rose pressed. "I just need you to build it, because I can't. I don't know how. And I'm sorry to have to ask you for even that much. I know how you feel about it."

"Rose, _why_ –"

"You just have to trust me."

The Doctor stared at her for about twenty seconds longer in silence, as if analysing her would show him the correct path. Apparently somehow it did, because he visibly set his jaw and rounded the console. He yanked part of the grating up and leaned down to forage through his spare parts, locating what he needed to start constructing. He banged things together more loudly than Rose thought was necessary, as if needing some outlet for his anger.

Fair enough, she thought. She certainly hadn't expected him to just placidly agree to this.

"Your Torchwood team didn't mention anything about _this_. Which is strange, because they were very happy to tell me all sorts of other far more meaningless things once I'd confirmed my identity," the Doctor said. "Do you know, they'd thought I was made-up. A strange figment conjured by a warped mind, they said."

"Yeah, well," Rose said evasively, "they think I'm completely off my nut, so there you are."

"Interestingly, even though they told me lots of things about recent world events and Torchwood's current creed and even the _weather_ for the last week, _that_ is the only thing they said when I asked about the life of one Rose Tyler. 'Barking mad', was the phrase they used, actually."

Rose could hear the implied questions, even though she doubted he'd ever voice them aloud. He wanted to know, were they right about her? Had something happened since he'd last seen her to send her off the deep end? Why else would she be asking him to do this?

Rose had heard that sort of sentiment whispered around her often enough over the years. 'Oh, that's Rose Tyler, you don't want to get too involved with her. They say she went through some tragedy and it broke her mind. She's not quite right, that one.' Never mind that she was, in every way that mattered, their boss. Torchwood 8's hierarchy wasn't quite official, just like the whole presence of Torchwood in Canada hadn't been official either since she'd taken it over and remade it. Their respect for her only extended to listening to orders when the aliens were raining missile fire on them, and that was only because she was damn good at saving lives.

Human lives, at least. Usually.

Anyway, not one of the Torchwood team knew a single personal detail about her. She found it easier that way. It meant there was less explaining to be done.

"It's all that travelling with you," Rose said flippantly. "Taught me that being anonymous is sometimes best. But we can't all go about spouting off ambiguous names like 'the Doctor' or 'John Smith' to help us along. Some of us have to fly under the radar in other ways."

"Keeping out of the history books when you're outside your own time, is that it?" the Doctor asked.

Rose swallowed, her mouth having somehow turned bone dry at startling speed. She'd have preferred to never have to explain that part of her life back in the other universe to him, if possible. But then, when did things with her (or him, for that matter) ever go quite to plan?

"Something like that," she replied, and knew even as she said it that he wasn't going to accept that as an answer.

"Why were you in the 25th century, Rose?" he pushed.

"What if I said that knowing that would affect your future, so I can't tell you?"

"What if I said I don't believe that?" he countered. "You weren't ever a particularly good liar, Rose, so don't bother."

"Well, what if I just don't think you need to know?" Rose shot back. "Huh? Couldn't you just trust me? Or did I just imagine how much faith you were willing to put in me last time we were together? What happened to that?"

The Doctor scoffed, "Of course you didn't imagine it. Look at what you've got me doing now." He gestured at the device he was fiddling with to make his point. "_That's_ how much I trust you. But Rose, this is something I need to know. If you've had to travel back and forward in time, I have to know _why_ so that I know whether or not it's going to change the wrong events."

"Oh, yeah," Rose said angrily. "I know this one. 'I'm a Time Lord and I know more than everyone else put together, so tell me everything you know or I'll go on a monologue and _make you_ spill everything you've ever known'. It's been a long time since I've heard this song, but I do still remember the tune so well. Not to mention the accompanying dance."

The Doctor frowned. "You sound like the people on that bus on Midnight," he accused.

There was another topic Rose would rather not have to go into right now, possibly even more so than the other. The only other time in her life she'd killed a person so directly had been flying away from a black hole, and she'd been too scared of the thing possessing that man to feel sorry about the man himself until much later. This time hadn't been like that. She'd had time to think about it. Too much time, she thought.

Someday, when she'd come to terms with it herself, filing it away with all the other things that she wished she didn't know she was capable of, maybe she'd tell him about what she'd done on the bus. But not just now.

"No," Rose corrected, trying to refocus her attention to banish the memory. "I don't sound like them. I sound like a Torchwood agent. I know I do. Sometimes I'm not all that proud of it. But you can't be at Torchwood for as long as I've been and not have that rub off on you a little. I'm used to being responsible for myself, and for my own planet. Having you swan in and tell us we can't look after ourselves because we can't understand what's going on around us is aggravating to say the least, Doctor. Nice as it is to have you save the day in the end, you don't have to treat humans like ... well, like we're stupid apes."

God, why was she even getting angry with him about this? Really, she just wanted to be happy that he was there, practically within touching distance. But just having him around confused her emotions. She didn't like it. At the same time, though, she loved it. She'd rather have him around and sending her for a loop than lose him again, any day.

Perhaps he felt the same way and so didn't want to push her too hard. Or perhaps his experience on that bus was still a little too fresh in his mind for him to doubt the negative impact his arrogance could have on humans. Whatever the reason, he let her criticism of his attitude go without them having to have a big row about it.

Saving the universe certainly sprang to mind as a good excuse to leave that sort of thing until later.

Unfortunately for Rose, the Doctor instead addressed a different aspect of what she'd said. "How long _were_ you at Torchwood, then?" he asked. "You barely look any older than when I last saw you, but you make it sound like ages."

"A while," she replied simply.

Inwardly, Rose cursed herself. Trust him to pick up her every little slip of the tongue. She wasn't usually this reckless in choosing her words. Not these days. She'd learned to watch herself. No, it was being with the Doctor again that made her careless like that. Had to be. She couldn't seem to stop herself from talking, blurting things out, because there'd never been anything she couldn't tell him (eventually, at least). And now here she was again, and it didn't seem natural to have to keep secrets from him.

The Doctor bristled at her answer, but didn't verbally respond to it immediately. When he did speak, his voice was calm. Deceptively so, she thought.

"There's nothing you could say that would make me turn my back on you, you know," he said. "You can just tell me, whatever it is you're hiding. We'll work through it."

"Like that I'm carrying a gun this very second?" Rose offered, looking to shock him into taking it back. She knew he believed what he was saying, but she personally doubted that his assertion would stand up to real testing. There were so many things she could tell him that might just manage to turn him against her. The gun was one of the truths that she thought she could deal with him knowing. "Or like that I've used that gun?"

"Like that," the Doctor confirmed, but she caught the slightest hesitation as the admission took him off-guard. She hadn't been the type to give a second thought to guns as self-defence at all the last time he saw her, even after spending all that time with Jack and his weapons. That should give the Doctor some vague clue of the sort of change he was up against now, she thought.

I killed a woman today, she added silently, but she couldn't quite say it aloud. Later, she thought. That seemed to be becoming like her mantra. Later.

"Is that why you think you can do this?" he asked, signalling at the half-made inverter as he slid another part into place. "I'll tell you now, killing one person with a gun doesn't compare. Do you really know what this device _does_?"

"Yes," Rose said. "It sends feedback through an entire species if they share enough biological material. The only reason to build one is to either take complete mental control over or commit murder against a whole clone species. And I need you to set it to do the latter. It's genocide in a can, basically, without there being an actual can."

"Yes," the Doctor said. "And can you do that? I won't step in and do it for you if you falter. I'm not even sure I can let _you_ do it, knowing what you're planning."

"I've done it before," Rose said.

"The Game Station hardly counts," the Doctor scoffed with a dark expression. "It might have been your body and your oh-so-human need for everyone but the villains to live, but the Bad Wolf wasn't really you. You can barely remember doing it. I had to _tell_ you about it when you asked about those garbled nightmares you couldn't figure out. But you'll remember this time, trust me."

"I wasn't talking about the Bad Wolf," Rose said.

The Doctor fumbled with the inversion device for a moment, but didn't quite drop it. Just as well, Rose thought. She wasn't sure they had time for him to start over again if he broke it. Not if they wanted any chance of keeping that so-important element of surprise on their sides.

"No?" he asked hesitantly. "You've ..."

"I'm wanted for genocide back in that parallel universe," Rose began. "A fugitive, even, depending on who you ask. I'm a bit surprised the Torchwood team didn't tell you that much about me as well, actually. I could never work out whether they actually knew it. I suppose that answers the question. Not that it matters now."

"What happened?" the Doctor asked.

"Does it matter?" Rose asked. "Genocide is genocide no matter what. And yes. I _remember_ it. Always will."

"It matters to _me_," the Doctor insisted, his voice cracking just a little from the force of his words.

Yeah, she supposed it would. He was probably much more likely to forgive her for that than he ever would be to forgive himself for the many times he'd had to kill off most or all of a species, as long as she could prove to him she'd had no choice.

That was the moment, Rose realised, when she could turn him against her if she wanted. She could keep her heart from being broken again. She could stay with him just long enough to help avert the end of all universes, and then she could leave him behind knowing that their relationship was eternally broken anyway. The future had to happen one way or another. In many ways, it would be so much easier for both of them if it happened without the two of them being together again for now. They'd found each other again, yes, and even properly kissed finally. But they hadn't had time to for the reality of being together again to sink in. Not really.

But if she'd learned nothing else in a life filled with hardship, Rose had at least learned that avoiding being hurt meant avoiding _living_. And she could no more purposely walk away from him on bad terms than she could choose to have never loved him in the first place.

"It was Sontarans," she said, and that immediately softened the Doctor's hard expression. That was it, she realised. The opportunity to make him hate her had already passed. She barely even needed to expand on that explanation, because the Doctor _knew_ the Sontarans. He knew what sort of decision she'd faced.

"Them or the Earth?" he asked.

"Them or sixteen planets in the surrounding systems, actually," Rose said with a lightness she didn't feel. "Thousands of creatures with bloody, war-driven minds against billions of relative innocents. It's an overly simplistic way of looking at it, I know, but that's how I had to see it at the time or I'd have gone as mad as my Torchwood employees think I am."

She'd thought just after she'd ordered the strike that she almost might understand how the Doctor felt having to end the Time War. But in pressing that final button, she hadn't also wiped out the human race and left herself alone in the universe.

He'd had to do so much worse.

And that was why she, rather than the Doctor, was the one who had to do the terrible thing she was planning now. He couldn't bring himself to do it. Not again. Not with the blood of his people already figuratively staining his hands.

"Public opinion over the Sontaran incident shifted after the fact. Isn't that always the way?" Rose mused. "So Torchwood put the blame squarely on my shoulders to cover their own arses, and then they disavowed all knowledge of me. I was exiled from Britain. From the whole of the Empire, actually, but that one central government based in London was having trouble keeping track of so many people scattered so far across the globe, so I managed to slip under the radar. Took over Torchwood in Canada."

"Britain expanded and took active control of the whole Commonwealth," the Doctor nodded. "One of your team explained it to me. A small Torchwood base was set up in each country in the Empire, he said."

"Yeah," Rose laughed mirthlessly, "that's how it was supposed to be. Like Torchwood 2 from the late 20th and early 21st centuries. That exists in this universe too, if memory serves. Just one man sitting in a tiny base going slowly insane from the want of companionship and the need for something important to do."

"But your Torchwood obviously grew," the Doctor commented. "I counted seven people in that base."

"I took some other insurrectionists under my wing, and so the ranks swelled. Catch them showing any gratitude for giving them a home and a purpose, though."

"And was crossing universes your idea, or Torchwood's?" the Doctor asked.

Rose shrugged. "Mine. Torchwood 1 in London would have jumped on the idea if they'd been capable of thinking it up, of course. The knowledge that it was even possible had faded out of records. Torchwood didn't know enough to even attempt it. So it had to be me."

"Is that why you went into the future? To tell Torchwood what needed to be done?"

"Something like that," she said.

She could already see those three words becoming her default answer for all of the more uncomfortable questions he was bound to ask her. Although, if she used it too often, she thought he might physically implode from frustration with her.

And really, she was fairly attached to this incarnation of him. It'd be a shame for him to have to regenerate from something as useless as that. He'd want to go out in a blaze of glory, if he had to go at all.

Regardless of the method, she wasn't ready to lose this Doctor at all.

For this time, at least, the Doctor let her non-answer pass. It seemed he'd remembered the imminent danger they were all in after all. Oh well, better late than never, she supposed. His hands sped across the device, which looked to be coming together finally, attaching bits and pieces together in a way that made no sense at all to Rose.

She couldn't have built it without him, which meant she couldn't commit the murders without him. That would haunt him, she thought, but it had to be that way. Even if she couldn't explain it to him, he'd be far more haunted by what would happen if he didn't help her do it.

"Torchwood only caught on to just how many stars were being affected about a hundred and thirty years ago," Rose said, shifting the topic away from herself. "They'd thought at first that it was just the usual situation where stars go supernova and the light stops reaching us thousands of years later, only that there seemed to be strange abundance of them. They didn't think anyway was wrong."

"But the stars were closer to Earth than that?"

"Yeah," Rose said. "All of them were close enough that the scientists started worrying that whatever was happening might somehow spread to our sun soon, and that'd be the end of us. It took Torchwood about sixty years to create the technology to explore time and space so they could see what had happened – or was happening. But they couldn't figure out any actual cause. There didn't seem to be one. The effect seemed to be spreading out of nothingness. They couldn't figure it out at all. My Torchwood team stole the information, and I was able to put everything together by sharing my knowledge of parallels with them. They all thought I was mad, of course. But then, it was a choice between the hope given by the word of a crazy person, or the despair of watching the world end without any way of stopping it. I'd take hope and prayer any day, and so did they."

"There's a lot to be said for hope," the Doctor agreed.

Rose smiled slightly. "Yeah, I know. You taught me that. Although I couldn't give any hope to the rest of the branches of Torchwood; I'd have been arrested. If all goes according to plan, or close enough to it, the other universes will just reset themselves. Torchwood London will never have a clue what happened."

"So I suppose you found out where the collapse of all those stars originated from once you got the universe-hopping sorted, or you wouldn't be here now," the Doctor said.

"Well," Rose started, "sort of. The Earth in 2008. And twenty-something other planets. And the Medusa Cascade. All at the same time, happening together. It's all a bit garbled," she admitted self-abasingly. "Sorry. I'm relying on post-event accounts, and you know what we humans can be like when it comes to recording the facts of alien encounters. Buried evidence gathered through Torchwood 3 in this universe was the only information that was even slightly reliable, and even they seemed unsure of the full details."

"Torchwood 3," the Doctor said. "That's Cardiff, is it?"

"Yeah," Rose agreed, but didn't elaborate. "The thing is, we studied that event closely enough that I know we can't act before the Earth is moved to the Medusa Cascade. Something about the future of humankind making their way out into the stars somehow revolves around that. So people have to die. Good people. But we _can_ step in and prevent a couple of things that don't _have_ to happen. They're up in the air, you see?"

Rose's eyes slid against her will to the door that led into the rest of the TARDIS, where Donna was off waiting for the Doctor and Rose to get it together.

She didn't have to have her memory wiped, Rose thought. In no other universe had that tragedy ever come close to occurring. Only in this time and place, since this was the only universe with a reality bomb. She'd seen it, in other places. Donna Noble, a brilliant woman spoken about with revelry on a hundred planets, the Doctor's companion for years to come yet. That was what Rose wanted for her more than anything.

Rose was damned if she was going to stand back and watch while a woman lost everything she'd ever learned about life and about herself since meeting the Doctor. She knew how devastating that would be for her personally. Who would Rose Tyler even be without the Doctor? She didn't want to know. Rose swore to herself that the Doctor wouldn't have to face that choice, and Donna wouldn't have to go through it.

"Humans," the Doctor scoffed unexpectedly. "You think you have any concept of time travel? It's complicated, and incredibly intricate. You can't even begin to imagine what could happen if you mess around with these events you're talking about, especially if they're somehow bordering a fixed point in time."

"The timelines are blurred around the things I'm talking about. We wouldn't be changing them, just deciding a path. I'm not stupid, Doctor. I've learned a lot about paradoxes since I last saw you."

"Who told you that? About the blurring?" the Doctor asked, sounding stunned.

"No one. I can see the way the edges shift, like it's in motion or something."

The Doctor frowned heavily. "Rose, you shouldn't be able to see that. That's the way _I_ see the universe. A human mind shouldn't be able to process it. The knowledge would burn out your mind."

He sounded like he was truly worried about her, not like he was just annoyed at her for trying to muck about with time. That was nice. Rose had missed that.

"Yeah, well, I've got a good brain, me," she responded glibly. "It's been just fine for years. Don't worry about it. Just ... I know what I'm talking about, okay? Can you just accept that? There are things coming that could go off in one bad direction, but really shouldn't. We can help it along, is all."

Rose looked down at the Doctor's hands, which were running slowly over the inverter but didn't seem to be actually _doing_ anything anymore. She frowned. "Hey! That's been finished for a while now, hasn't it?" Rose accused. "You're just fiddling now, buying time. Trying to distract me with all that 'intricacies of time' talk of yours."

The Doctor looked down at the completed biological inverter. "Yes," he admitted. "I'm trying to give you time to think about –"

"It's the Daleks, Doctor," Rose interrupted. "It's not just a choice between some people on Earth or a random group of clones. It's the _Daleks_."

Rose remembered a time when she'd stopped the Doctor from killing a single Dalek. She had admittedly done that more for his benefit than anything to do with the Dalek itself, but still. How she'd grown up since then.

The look of terror in the Doctor's eyes was just a shadow of how he'd looked confronted with that one Dalek when he'd been certain they were all gone. He'd coped with that. He knew now that he'd probably never completely get rid of them. Daleks. The species that just _wouldn't die_.

She probably wasn't going to commit complete genocide at all, Rose mused darkly. There were always more somewhere. But if someone told her that they could ever properly wipe the damn things out of space and time, she might just jump right on that bandwagon and support them. It was having to be the one to do it that gave her pause. Oh, she wasn't the kind to step back and let someone else do it really, as she'd proven on that bus earlier. But being right there and _watching_ them die at her hands ... Not even the Sontarans had died in front of her like that. It was so ... _personal_.

The Doctor knew what it meant that the Daleks were back in force. Yet, even knowing that, he couldn't use the device himself. Never again. She knew that.

But Rose thought, seeing that slither of fear in his eyes at the mention of the Daleks, that maybe the knowledge of just what it was they were facing meant he was at least starting to understand that Rose wasn't completely crazy for wanting him to build the device in the first place. With the Daleks, it was always a choice between them and all other life in the universe. This time, it was actually a choice between them and all _matter_ in the universe. In every universe, actually.

A single race of insane murderers, versus every star, planet and creature in every avenue of existence. It was something she'd been thinking about for the last couple of days, since she'd first fully discovered the nature of the events that was making the stars go out. She'd decided, and she stood by it now, that faced with that choice, Rose thought she could live with wiping a species out. She would never be comfortable with it – she'd have to be psychotic not to care at all – but it was necessary.

"You should go and tell Donna we're ready," Rose said quietly. "We've got work to do."

Rose gave the Doctor the time and place co-ordinates when he arrived back, red-head in tow. Donna was glancing between the Doctor and Rose with a frown, likely sensing the tension.

"Off to save the universe, then, are we?" she asked.

"Every universe, actually," Rose said.

"Well," Donna said. "Can't say you aren't good at one-upmanship, Blondie. He hasn't even saved the one universe since I've been travelling with him."

"Oi," the Doctor complained. "What, are you saying you want the universe to be in danger just so I can act _impressive_?"

"As if you don't already think you're that impressive anyway, space man," Donna shot back.

As tense as the Doctor was, he couldn't seen to quite help the slight tug of a smile against his lips at that. Rose could tell by that alone that Donna was good for him. She loved the other woman for that.

"That's more like it!" Donna said. "Bit of a smile."

Rose's heart ached with the memory of saying the same thing to him just before they'd been separated. It had been quite a while ago for her, but the memories of those last few minutes they'd had together were burned into her mind.

Donna's fate wouldn't be the same. She _wasn't_ going to be separated from the Doctor. Not if Rose had anything to do with it.

"The Medusa Cascade, you said?" the Doctor asked.

"Yeah," said Rose. "23rd of June 2008 on Earth. I'm pretty sure everything happens in the Medusa Cascade at the equivalent time, but it's hard to tell. Like I said, shoddy records."

The Doctor nodded. "All right, we'll start by looking there. And this is a tricky business, so we'll have to be spot on. Do you know the time of day?"

"Like you could hit the exact time anyway," Donna snarked.

"_Donna_," the Doctor chastised. "We're on a schedule here. So, time of day?"

"Early morning," Rose said. "Maybe eight o'clock? But you'll want to go earlier than that."

"Why's that?" the Doctor asked, squinting suspiciously at her. "If you're planning to change something ..."

"No!" Rose said, exasperated. "It's just that you have to move the TARDIS a second out of synch to match the rest of the Medusa Cascade. Torchwood 3 mentioned that part in their records, at least. I don't know how long that's going to take you."

"Could be a while," the Doctor agreed, "since 'a second' could be a rounded figure. Without anything specific to aim for, we'll have to go searching for the right time. It could be hidden in any of thousands of parts of a second." He looked at the centre of the TARDIS console. "Which means we'll need a bit of _accuracy_," he said to it pointedly.

The room shuddered, as if in annoyance.

"Hey!" Rose cried. "Really not the time to make her angry!"

"Sorry," the Doctor said, but didn't sound it at all.

Sometimes he could be so petulant, Rose reflected. She tried to ignore how fond the thought sounded inside her own head.

"Isn't anyone going to tell me what we're actually doing?" Donna asked. "All this talk of one second and cascades and things, and no one's told me anything even slightly useful."

"Trust me, Donna," the Doctor said shortly. "This time, you're really better off not knowing."

"Oi, _she's_ a human, too," Donna pointed at Rose, "and apparently she's capable of knowing. Don't treat me like an idiot."

"_I'd_ rather not know either!" the Doctor burst out. "It's nothing to do with being human or Time Lord or otherwise. Look, it's fine. There's going to be some danger, so be prepared for that, but we're going to sort it. Other than that, it won't help you to know. Really."

Donna contemplated the Doctor, looking as though she wanted to argue further, but something in the Doctor's expression seemed to stop her. She held her tongue. Rose could tell just how hard that was for her.

The Doctor set and reset and reset again the co-ordinates on the TARDIS, checking the monitor repeatedly and even flinging the TARDIS doors open once or twice for a better view.

It was a jerky sort of ride, tossing the TARDIS in all directions, but both Rose and Donna managed to keep their feet by clinging onto convenient railings and coral struts.

"It could be happening already, just a second from now, or a second ago," the Doctor muttered in aggravation, "and I just can't _find_ it."

"What if –" Rose began.

"Oh ho!" the Doctor exclaimed suddenly as a loud, consistent beeping sound echoed throughout the console room. "It's a signal. Yes! Something to lock on to, finally!"

Harriet Jones, Rose thought sadly, thinking back on Jack Harkness's notes of this occurrence. She remembered Harriet. There was nothing to be done about her death now, and they couldn't have saved her life even if they'd got there in time. She was too important, even if she wasn't Prime Minister anymore. An extraordinary woman like that living in the world where she shouldn't have survived – it would have been magnitudes worse than how she'd tried to change her father's death back when she'd been new to travelling in the TARDIS and couldn't have begun to grasp these things.

They endured the rocky trip through what felt like the biggest storm in the universe, fires bursting spontaneously into existence around the room. When the TARDIS stopped finally, Rose dropped her arms (which were aching from having held on so tightly) from around the coral she'd grabbed and rushed over to the Doctor's side, looking at the console monitor. For a few moments she saw numerous planets, including the Earth, and breathed a sigh of relief. Right time, right place, she thought.

Now there was just one more thing to be done.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the sudden replacement of the view of those planets with several faces.

"Jack!" Rose exclaimed.

All those reports she'd found that he'd written for Torchwood and then tried to bury (quite successfully, too, until she'd come along knowing what to look for), and she hadn't managed to run into him in person during all of her travels of the universe. It was so good to see him again, even if it was only on a monitor.

Had he always been that gorgeous?

She tried not to feel guilty at seeing him still alive and as young as ever. Such a long life was not something she'd wish on anyone, but she couldn't take back what she'd done to Jack. He was stuck.

She was sorry for it, but she couldn't dwell on it.

"Rose Tyler! Where have you been?" Jack scolded her jokingly. "And you!" he said to the Doctor. "Took your time, didn't you?"

"Captain," the Doctor greeted. "And Sarah Jane Smith and Martha Jones! It's 'This Is Your Life' all over again, without the tea!"

He smiled at Rose as if sharing a joke with her – the first true smile he'd given her in a while – but the reference went over her head. It was obviously something she should have remembered, she realised. She was constantly doing that: forgetting.

It was just so hard to keep it all straight in her head.

"Come on, Doctor," Rose said. "We have to go before the Daleks detect us. The only thing we've got going for us is surprise."

The Doctor nodded, already pinpointing the largest of the ships and directing the TARDIS towards it. "Are you sure you're ready?"

"Yes," Rose said.

"Are you sure –"

"_Yes_," Rose answered again. "There's no choice."

The Doctor looked torn about the truth of that, but nodded curtly nonetheless, throwing the last switch. The TARDIS ground into motion once more, and Rose swiped the biological inverter from where it was positioned on the grating.

"This button here?" she asked, indicating.

The Doctor's eyes flicked from what he was doing at the console to look. "That button there," he confirmed.

"You don't even have to come out," Rose said. "You don't have to watch."

"Yes. I do," the Doctor said.

Rose bit her lip in sympathy and nodded. Of course he did. He had to see for himself what he'd done. He was that sort of man.

The TARDIS stopped and Rose pushed open the TARDIS door, almost expecting a Dalek ray to hit her before she'd even had time to orient herself. No attack came, though, luckily, though weapons all over the massive space all jerked towards them almost in unison, ready to act.

It was just as well the Doctor had come out, Rose found, because every Dalek on the whole ship, and the grotesque being she very quickly determined was Davros, had their single eyes trained on him rather than the woman with the weapon behind her back.

Well, they thought he was the biggest threat to them, didn't they? Normally they'd be right. But not this time.

Rose acted quickly. She wished she didn't need both hands to operate the device as she aimed and depressed the button; she would very much have liked to have been able to block out the screams even a little by covering her ears. Sparks flew as the Dalek minds were cut off abruptly from their metal suits, never to become active again. Hundreds of thousands of Daleks, many of them down on the 27 planets surrounding the ships, sparked out within seconds of each other, and Davros died with a painful scream right in front of her eyes.

She felt all of it almost as if it was happening to her.

It took a little while for everything to fall properly quiet, with only the sounds of the ship around them humming to indicate that time hadn't frozen completely. The quiet made it sound unbelievably loud in comparison when the biological inverter smashed against the ground, Rose's suddenly slack fingers having lost their grip on it.

Rose wavered on her feet, and the Doctor was immediately at her side. As she leaned over and was sick, the Doctor held back her hair for her, murmuring inaudibly in her ear.

Rose was pitifully thankful that he was even willing to touch her after seeing that.

She'd known it would be hard, but she hadn't realised how ... _deafening_ their deaths would be. Those were sounds that would ring in her ears forever. She still felt nauseous.

"The screams," she said.

"I know," the Doctor said calmly – too calmly to be real. He ran a hand over her back.

It didn't quite make her feel better, but she was glad for his support anyway. She'd been worried, based on his reaction to just the idea of doing this earlier, that he wouldn't be able to even look at her once it was done.

"I need to go put the planets back," the Doctor said softly. "This ship's starting to malfunction without anything to keep it on course, so I have to hurry. Will you be all right?"

No, she thought.

"Yeah," she said. "Go save the universe."

"Oh, no," the Doctor said, his voice kind. "This is just the clean-up. The universe has already been saved. Some brilliant human woman, I think. I'll have to remember to thank her for that."

Rose burst out with a harsh laugh that caught almost painfully in her throat. "Yeah. I bet all of them out there will appreciate it too."

"They never do," the Doctor said, and Rose met his eyes for a moment before he pulled away and went off to make sure everything was put back where it belonged.

Those three words provided an interesting insight. Rose thought she might understand something important about the Doctor, now. How much he needed everyone to know how clever he was, and to admit that he was the only one in the universe who could do whatever it was that needed doing at a particular time to save everyone. It wasn't that he was being cocky. It was just that, every now and then, he wouldn't mind the acknowledgement. Not for the whole world to bow at his feet or anything. Just for _someone_ to realise the sacrifices he'd made, and love him for it.

She looked away from what the Doctor was doing as she pulled herself back to her feet, and came face-to-face with Donna.

"You just ..." she started, sounding shocked and angry in about equal proportions.

"I killed them all," Rose admitted. Her voice sounded hollow even to her.

Well, she thought, this certainly put the one death on that bus on Midnight in perspective, didn't it? That had been more hands-on than she was used to as well, but though she'd felt bad about it, she hadn't felt that anything like terrible as she felt about this now.

"How could you?" Donna asked. She looked at the Doctor. "How could you let her?"

The Doctor shook his head sadly, not even pausing in his work. "I told you that you were better off not knowing."

"You've never met the Daleks, have you?" Rose asked.

"The what?"

"Daleks," the Doctor said. "They're the metal creatures all around you. No, Donna's never run into them."

"And now maybe you never will, if you're lucky," Rose said.

"What, all of this was so I wouldn't meet them?"

Rose would never admit it to her, but in a way that was true. If it hadn't been for wanting to save Donna, and to prevent the creation of a man who'd spend the duration of his suddenly human lifetime miserable without the touch of his TARDIS in his consciousness and the ability to explore the stars, Rose wouldn't have had to be the one to kill the Daleks. It had to be done one way or another, of course, so it wasn't _all_ for their sakes. But then the Doctor would have had to live with knowing that he – or a version of himself, at least – had a much more direct hand in the genocide than just building the weapon, and that that other version had barely even regretted doing it.

Still, Rose's conscience at least might have been a lot clearer if it wasn't for the need to prevent Donna from losing herself. It was a fair trade, Rose thought, even if Donna would never appreciate that it had even been made.

They never do, the Doctor had said. Yeah, she'd sort of seen that in the other universe as well. She could learn to deal with it here. She just needed some time to sort through it all.

It'd been a long week.

"Last one!" the Doctor called as he sent off planet Earth back to its usual orbit.

Rose thought of that planet; that was her real home outside the TARDIS, even if she'd only really spent her childhood years there. The other universe had never quite felt that way, even when her mum and her sort-of-Dad and Mickey were hanging about just like they should be.

She'd never fit, in all those years.

"There," the Doctor announced. "And now I think we'd better get off this ship, because it's starting to get very unstable and just might blow up at any second."

"Oi, thanks for the warning!" Donna said. She spared a distrusting glare for Rose before heading back to the TARDIS.

The Doctor walked up to Rose and placed a hand on the small of her back, using it to direct her gently towards the TARDIS with him following bare inches behind her. He closed the door of the TARDIS as they both entered, dropping his hand away from her and allowing her to walk further into the room before crossing to the console.

"Back to Earth, d'you think?" the Doctor asked them. "I imagine Jack and Sarah Jane and Martha are a bit confused. We might want to let them in on what just happened."

"You want to be involved in the clean up?" Rose asked. "Really?"

"Well, not with UNIT and all the red tape and such, but between a few friends? I could stand a quick visit."

Rose thought of Jack with his strong arms and his willingness to say things that the Doctor never would, and Sarah Jane's caring eyes as she'd said "Find me, someday." And she didn't have a clue who that Martha woman was, but the Doctor _did_ only take the best.

Yeah, she could do with a visit as well. Maybe seeing all those brilliant people she'd just saved would help a little.

"So what, everything's back to normal?" Donna asked. "Isn't anyone ever going to tell me why you've suddenly decided – without even _talking_ to me about it, thank you very much – that the best way to deal with aliens is to just go in there and kill them all straight away? Or am I just supposed to shut up and go along with it?" Donna looked directly at the Doctor. "Is that what it's going to be like now?" she asked. "You two off sharing secrets like a private little club, no third wheels allowed? Because I'll go home right now, if that's it. I'm not putting up with it!"

"Donna," Rose started, "we don't mean –"

"_You_," Donna said harshly. "Just ... not right now. He's an alien, at least. He's got all sorts of weird morals to fall back on. But you, you're _human_ and you still did that."

"Donna," the Doctor said warningly. "Leave off her. If you want to blame someone, have a go at me. I built that atrocity."

Rose turned on the Doctor. "Oh my god, you are such a pig-headed _martyr_!" she said.

The Doctor looked very taken aback. That probably wasn't the reaction he'd expected from trying to defend her.

"Stop trying to take responsibility for everything when it isn't your fault," Rose said. "It doesn't make you noble, it just make you stupid. You don't _have_ to always be suffering as much as you do. Take responsibility when you need to, but let the rest of us be accountable for our own actions, will you? I'm not going to feel any less guilty if you're trying to take the blame as well. Probably the opposite, actually. So please just don't."

The Doctor, rather than getting angry with her in response as she half-expected, still looked more stunned than anything. "I can't help feeling guilty," he said.

Rose shook her head tiredly, breathing deep to calm herself down again. "No," she said with a mirthless laugh. "You wouldn't be you, then, would you? But at least try to put it in perspective, will you?"

"You're both as bad as each other, aren't you?" Donna asked incredulously. She literally threw her hands in the air dramatically. "Right. I'm going to be in my room. You," she said specifically to the Doctor, "can either come in and explain everything, or come in and help me pack. You know how many clothes and products and things I have, so I'd think twice about choosing that last bit if I were you. And the explanation better be bloody brilliant, or I'm making you carry my bags back to the house as well as packing them for me!"

With that, Donna swept out.

"I'm sorry," Rose said. "I didn't want to put space between you two. You seem to get along so well."

"We do," the Doctor said, "except when we really don't. Not your fault."

"Well," Rose said. "I'm still sorry."

"So am I," the Doctor said. He took the few steps necessary to close the gap between them and reached for Rose's hand. She offered it gratefully.

"I get what you were trying to say, you know," he said.

"Do you?" Rose asked. "Which part? I barely understand any of it myself, right now. I don't even know why I got angry at you."

The Doctor squeezed her hand comfortingly. "You meant that you feel responsible for my guilt on top of your own, so I'm making it worse for you. And I'm sorry."

Rose nodded slightly. "Yeah. But you can't help it, can you?"

"No," the Doctor said simply.

Bizarrely, she had a moment of wishing that she'd had time to go brush her teeth after being sick earlier so she could kiss him, because maybe at least one of them would feel better if they could share that kind of comfort. God, her life was strange. She'd been yelling at him just now, and killing Daleks barely ten minutes ago, and nearly being thrown off a bus full of frantic humans into fatal sunlight not half a day earlier, and here she was worrying about kissing him.

Stupid, she thought. What was wrong with her?

Still, just the hand-holding was nice. Whether or not he was quietly blaming her, she didn't know, but the important thing now was that it apparently wasn't enough to push them apart. Just knowing that lifted a weight off her.

Maybe the Doctor hadn't been lying to himself earlier at all when he said she could tell him anything. After he'd seen her kill a whole army at once, with the purposeful push of a button, everything else just sort of paled.

Not that she was going to burst out with _all_ of her secrets, or anything. That'd just be plain stupid of her.

"You'll be able to straighten out things with Donna, right?" Rose asked.

"Yeah," the Doctor said. "She's never seen a Dalek before, like you said. She'll still probably be annoyed with me for not explaining to her in advance, but we've been through this sort of thing before on a smaller level. She doesn't want to leave the TARDIS any more than I want her to go. We'll work it out."

"Good," Rose said. "I don't want you to lose her, either."

"She'll still probably think you're crazy for a while," the Doctor said. "Until she gets to know you."

"Yeah," Rose said with a tiny forced smile. "And then once she knows me she'll be _sure_ I'm mad. That's okay. I'm used to it. Bit like you, I think. 900 years of being the mad alien with the blue box, right?"

"You and me, Rose Tyler," the Doctor said. "We just might be two of a kind."

"Yeah?" Rose asked.

"Absolutely."

He thought they fit together, even after all this. Maybe that would be enough to help her get through all the things that she knew had yet to come.

"I'm glad to have you back," the Doctor added. "It's been a bit chaotic, so I can't remember if I even said that."

"Nor can I," Rose said, and a choked laugh slipped out of her mouth unexpectedly. "I missed you, too."

She reached out and rested a palm against the centre of his chest.

"Two hearts," she said. "I can feel them against my fingertips. I'd almost forgotten."

"So," the Doctor asked, "was it worth it? Jumping galaxies just to find some stupid two-hearted alien so you could save the world?"

"Always," Rose said.

The Doctor smiled, seeming to take a moment to bask in her answer. Then he turned more serious again. "Really, though, what about leaving behind your family to travel forward into the 25th century and getting stuck here with all this baggage? Did you even get to tell everyone what you were doing before you jumped forward in time?"

Now that the immediate danger was behind them and there was enough time to actually explain it, Rose thought that she could probably give him that one answer. Rose had secrets that mattered more to her than this one, anyway. She only worried that it might open her up to the questions she _didn't_ want to answer so much.

Still, she might as well get it over with.

"What makes you think I got to the 25th century by travelling forward in time?" she asked.


	3. Chapter Three

Author's Notes: This chapter includes, among many other things, an AU version of the ending of 'Planet of the Dead'. Credit for a couple of lines (paraphrased or directly quoted) goes to Russell T Davies and Gareth Roberts. The rest is all me. 

* * *

Chapter Three

_"What makes you think I got to the 25th century by travelling forward in time?" she asked._

He was silent for minutes on end as he looked her over, a sort of disbelieving look shining through the blank mask he'd been attempting to project.

"You arrived in that world in the 21st century," he said. It was a statement, not a question.

"Yes," she agreed anyway.

"You can't tell me you lived through all those years. I know what a person who can't die feels like. It's a fact in time and space. It grates on my nerves, as a time sensitive being. It's like something unpleasant is crawling under my skin, just being near it, because it's so _wrong_."

Oh, Jack, Rose thought glumly. Was that how the Doctor had explained it to him? Damn him and his complete lack of tact sometimes, honestly.

"You don't feel like that," the Doctor continued. "So you can't be 450 years old."

Rose snorted disbelievingly. "What, d'you think you have the market cornered on people who can live for thousands of years but can still die?"

"No, but I know you. There's no way that the Rose Tyler I know could go 450 years without getting into enough trouble to get killed several times over."

"You'd be surprised," Rose said, without really answering. "It's certainly been a long time since I've been out in the field directly endangering myself with the aliens. I had to keep my head down after a while, when it became obvious that I wasn't getting any older. Field work drew too much attention towards me, you see, and I couldn't afford that. Well, _outside_ attention, that is. I couldn't really avoid Torchwood catching on, no matter how thick most of the Directors tended to have been over the years. They'd catch on, and then I'd relocate, or even change my identity once or twice, and I'd start again. I'd be just a twenty year old woman making her way up in the world. People will believe anything if it _looks_ like it could be true."

"And in all that time, you never found out why?"

Rose chose her words carefully, not wanting to lie to him. That feeling of wishing that she could share the truth with him aside, he'd be sure to catch on to a lie anyway.

"Oh, I have a fair enough idea," she said. "Torchwood kept getting it in their heads to lock me up and study me every few decades. I told them how much of a waste of resources it was, because every time they'd just come up with the same thing. I've got something sort of attached to my cells. It's some sort of energy that makes the cells reproduce perfectly rather than breaking down. That's what the Torchwood medical staff always concluded, at least. But that's all it is. It's just something that keeps me young. I mean, I can still die. Well, I think. I haven't exactly tried to test that out or anything. I'm not suicidal."

The Doctor looked both confused and still slightly suspicious for a moment, and then he smacked himself on the head. "Arkon! 72nd century Arkon! Oh, humanoid species and their never-ending obsession with looking young and living longer, honestly. My head is so stupid, that didn't even occur to me!" He stopped and peered at her. "Rose Tyler, how is it that we were on Arkon for less than an hour, and didn't set a foot near their hospitals, and yet you _still_ managed to get anti-transmogrification energy bound to your cells?"

Rose honestly had no idea what any of that meant, but she quickly offered, "Jeopardy friendly?" as an answer.

"Oh, yes. Always. I've never met anyone else who could get themselves in these kinds of situations even if they tried." He quickly sobered. "But that type of energy doesn't last forever. You're right. You can still die, even of old age once the energy degrades and unbinds itself from your cells. And it won't help you if you get hurt."

"Oh," Rose said. "Right. Well, I figured that, I guess."

"I should take a look, really," the Doctor muttered, seemingly to himself. "We've got the TARDIS equipment, now. That's much better than any substandard rubbish Torchwood could ever find, no matter what century they were in. I could take a look at you in the infirmary, make sure the energy is still doing its job and everything is still working."

"No," Rose said firmly. "I don't really want to. What if it's going to run out tomorrow or something? I'd rather not know that in advance."

The Doctor gave her a long, contemplative look, but then nodded. "All right. I can understand that. It'd be like looking into your own future, and who wants to do that? Takes all the fun out of everything."

Rose could tell he really still wanted a look for his own peace of mind, but she also knew he'd let it rest. For now, at least. That was the important thing.

That explanation had certainly gone much better than Rose had expected. The Doctor talked too much, that was his problem. She'd just given him part of the truth, and he'd not only gone off on a spiel and provided his own explanations, but he'd also given her the perfect excuse to not have him test the theory. She loved that he ranted on like that, really, but sometimes he did tend to shoot himself in the foot. She'd been worried about the Inquisition coming to the TARDIS, and instead she hadn't even had to lie.

Only people who'd never had to make huge universe-altering decisions thought that omissions were anything like as bad as outright lies, anyway.

"You should go and talk to Donna," Rose said. "The longer she's annoyed at you, the longer it will take you to make it up to her, probably."

"Yeah, probably," the Doctor echoed.

"Tell her I'm sorry, would you?" she asked.

"Yeah," he agreed again.

He cast one last longing glance at her, as if he didn't quite want to leave, and then went off in search of a wayward ginger woman.

Rose breathed deeply for a moment, and then allowed herself to sag against a piece of coral.

She was exhausted. She'd barely stopped to breathe in a week, and these last few hours had been the most taxing yet, particularly emotionally. She'd thought for sure that the first thing she'd want to do was shower, but she'd definitely changed her mind. Right now, she couldn't imagine anything as heavenly or as necessary as _sleep_. 

* * *

When Rose woke up, she was immediately confronted with the Doctor's steady gaze barely a foot away from her face.

"Whoa!" she said in surprise, jerking away on the bed. "Didn't expect _you_ here."

"I didn't expect you here, either," he returned from where he was hunched over in a chair he'd pulled up to the bedside. "What was wrong with your room?"

"Nothing," Rose said, blinking sleepily at him and looking around at the generic bedroom she'd landed herself in. "Couldn't find it, is all."

"Oh," the Doctor said, frowning. "I wonder why the TARDIS didn't move it to make it easy for you to track down."

Rose ran a hand over her face, trying to wake herself up enough to deal with the Doctor's chatter. After centuries, she'd still never really been able to force herself into becoming a morning person. Or a whatever time of day it actually was on the TARDIS person, she supposed. It certainly felt like the crack of dawn to her.

"I dunno," Rose said. "Maybe she's put my room in storage or something. Who knows. The bigger question is why you were watching me sleep, I think."

"You weren't in the console room when I got back," the Doctor explained. "And I thought you might have gone to your old room, but you weren't there either. And ... well, I got a little worried." He sounded sheepish. "You took that Vortex Manipulator back off me earlier, and I thought maybe ..."

Rose raised her eyebrows. "That, what? I'd just decided to run off once I got through with saving the universe without so much as a goodbye."

The Doctor looked uncomfortable. "No! Well, maybe. I thought that maybe that thing could have pulled you back across the void against your will. I never really took the time to study it when I had it; I just fixed it up well enough to transport me back to the Midnight of this universe. Of course, then I started thinking about it, and I realised how stupid I'd been in not checking that the walls of the universes weren't about to crumble after being weakened. You know me. I get caught up with things sometimes and miss the obvious. It turns out, though, that when the Dalek ships malfunctioned and their machine composed of Z-Neutrino energy failed, the universes all snapped back into place. You're stuck here."

"Stuck with you," Rose said.

"Yeah?" he asked, a slight smile forming hopefully.

"Better than not bad," she confirmed. "Brilliant."

He didn't grin, but his eyes shone with happiness nonetheless.

"So you and Donna are all good now?" Rose asked.

"Yeah," he said. "She's still annoyed, like I thought she would be, but I explained about the Daleks. She doesn't think we're just going to go on a merry killing spree across the galaxies for the fun of it."

Rose reached over and rested her hand on his forearm. "She never really thought that," she said. "She knows you too well to have thought that."

"Maybe."

"So once you finished with Donna, and figured out the universes were fine, you came in here to watch me sleep, like a stalker?" Rose teased, trying to break his sober mood.

"Hey!" the Doctor said. "I'll have you know that I was worried about you when I couldn't find you! Catch me doing that again, with you acting like this."

Rose quirked her lips at him. "I'm glad you're here," she said. It was right there on the tip of her tongue to say that it was nice seeing him there when she woke up, but she thought that might be a bit forward this soon after they'd been reunited. She didn't want to push him away by forcing things too quickly.

"But still," she said, "sittin' there watching me so intently. Were you breathing deeply, like those phone stalkers you hear about, to go along with the theme?"

He knew she was joking, and he smiled back slightly, and that was good. They felt more like them when they were both smiling, even though neither of them was really able to manage more than a small upturn of the lips at that very moment. It was still a start.

"I was just sitting here thinking that 450 years have passed, and you look just the same."

"Oh, not always," she replied self-deprecatingly. "Like, for instance, the last time I was blonde was ... oh, about three centuries ago. Blonde hair's a menace to keep up. I've tried all sorts of other colours. I was varying shades of ginger for fifty whole years; you would've been jealous," she adds teasingly. "I don't know how you stand having Donna around without going mad from it. Anyway, ginger's actually a lot closer to my real hair colour, so it sort of worked. But I did miss being blonde. And then when we finally put together the Manipulator, I thought, what if he doesn't recognise me? I don't recognise myself in the mirror half of the time. I couldn't stand it if you looked at me and didn't know who I was, even if it was only for a few moments."

"I'd always know you, Rose Tyler," the Doctor said. "You're unique."

"Yeah," Rose chuckled. "That's one word for it."

She'd expected that the words would come out bitter, or at least that the laugh would sound a little dark. Strangely, they didn't.

"Was that a laugh?" the Doctor asked. "A real, proper laugh?"

"Shut up," she said, but she was sort of pleased as well. Knowing that she was still capable of being happy was a nice sign. She figured that if anything was going to make her laugh again – properly laugh, that was – it would likely be the Doctor.

"So what do you think?" he asked. "Reckon we should go close a time loop?"

"What one's that, then?" Rose asked.

"Well ... I daresay that somewhere on Earth right now, in amongst all the other people running around like headless poultry, there's one Captain Jack Harkness who's about to have to record what just happened. And since you only knew dates and details from Torchwood's records –"

"We'd better make sure he knows enough to actually write them," Rose finished. "Yeah, that sounds like a good idea."

"Very clever, me," the Doctor.

"Gimme half an hour?" she suggested.

The Doctor nodded. "Right. Half an hour. Got some bits and pieces of the TARDIS to fix anyway, after what that whole subwave-pulling-us-into-synch debacle did to her."

Rose sent him off and then headed for the wardrobe room, which was much easier to find than her old bedroom had been when she'd been stumbling around in an exhausted daze hours earlier. She walked in and looked around the massive space with no concept of where to start. She remembered a lot about her time with the Doctor better than most of the things that had only happened to her five years ago, but the layout of the wardrobe room wasn't the type of thing that had been catalogued away and protected in her mind.

The TARDIS, seeming to sense her quandary, notched up one of the lights on the third level as if to show her the way. Rose climbed the winding stairs and walked along to the light. There she found 21st century clothing of the jeans, T-shirts and hoodies variety. Just the sort of thing she would have worn last time she'd been on board the ship, all laid out ready for her.

"Thanks," she said, patting the railing nearest to her, "but that's really not my style anymore. Got something in the button-ups and trousers range? Maybe something a bit mid-23rd century? I liked the fashion back then."

Another light brightened one layer down. Rose descended the stairs, partly retracing her steps, and was much more satisfied with the result. "Thanks."

She grabbed some clothes, along with a leather jacket she immediately fell in love with, from the racks and headed off for a shower. Finally. Now that she'd knocked sleep off the top of her to-do list, there was nothing she wanted more than to shower. She felt like she had a lifetime's worth of grime to scrub off herself.

When she was dressed again and was standing in front of the mirror brushing her hair, she paused to look at herself.

"I killed a whole race today," she told her reflection. It just looked back blankly. Funny. She'd almost expected it to look accusing. That was certainly how she felt inside.

She noticed that her regrowth was showing already. Damn blonde hair, she thought. She'd have to grab some hair dye while they were in Cardiff, or one of the stops soon after that. Maybe she could take Donna and they could bond over girly stuff or something. Lord knew Rose clearly had some ground to make up with Donna after that blow-up earlier.

In truth, Rose couldn't remember the last time she'd taken a moment to really care about make-up and hair care and the like, at least beyond their utility as camouflage and disguises when those became necessary. That girl who'd worried so much about what she looked like that she'd practically used half a tube of mascara every morning didn't just seem like she was from years ago; she seemed like she'd been a different person altogether. Still, Rose could fake interest with the best of them. She got the feeling that Donna, at least, was definitely concerned with those sorts of things.

"Oh, good," Donna said when she saw Rose enter the console room. "You do change outfits. I wasn't looking forward to having _two_ people around who think the easiest way to get dressed in the morning is by always putting on the same clothes."

"No, that's just him," Rose said, indicating the Doctor. "At least he's got two suits now; he used to just wear the brown."

"How do you know about the other one?" the Doctor asked.

Rose raised an eyebrow. "I used your bathroom."

Rose had, of course, had a good eye roll over the multiple versions of the same two suits chucked haphazardly all about the small room. She would have thought the Lord of Time could find enough free time to clean up after himself. Apparently not.

"Why'd you do that? There's sixteen bathrooms at least on the TARDIS."

Rose shrugged. "It felt homey," she said. After the sterility of the bedroom she'd slept in the night before, she found she'd needed that.

"Shared bathrooms, eh?" Donna queried. "What's next, matching robes?"

The Doctor glared, but Rose and Donna exchanged a look.

Apparently the chat the Doctor had had with Donna earlier had done wonders for Rose's relationship with Donna as well as his. Perhaps getting on good terms wouldn't be as hard as she'd been sort of dreading.

"Right, so!" the Doctor said a little too loudly, clearly attempting to change the topic. "Cardiff Bay."

"Why're we going to Cardiff, of all places?" Donna asked.

"Torchwood 3's based there," the Doctor said. "We need to see a man about a spatio-temporal loop."

"Captain Jack Harkness, he's called," Rose said. "He flirts a lot. Don't be offended or anything. He's harmless."

"I've never been offended by flirting in my whole life," Donna said. "Is he good-looking, at least?"

Rose smiled. "Donna Noble, prepare to have your definition of 'good-looking' rewritten."

"Oi," the Doctor protested. "He's not all that."

"Completely gorgeous," Rose countered to Donna. "Built, as well." Then she looked back to the Doctor and quirked an eyebrow. "But, as the Doctor kept telling me when we first started travelling together, I go more for pretty boys. Jack's sort of ... slightly brawny Hollywood star, more than pretty. Seriously, I always sort of expect that cliché little ping of light to flash off his teeth when he smiles."

Donna grinned. "Sounds like just my kind of man. And," she said, turning to the Doctor, "that's the second woman who's called you 'pretty' in just the last few weeks."

"Fwa," the Doctor exhaled. "It's a good thing I checked my masculinity at the TARDIS door, isn't it?"

The TARDIS landed with a judder, as usual, and the three of them stepped out into pouring rain.

"Ah!" the Doctor said. "Atmospheric excitation. The weather will be off for months, probably, after being dragged all over the universe."

"Looks pretty normal for Wales to me," Rose said.

Luckily, it didn't take long for Jack to emerge from in front of the Plass. He ran up and swept Rose into his arms.

"Rose Tyler," he said into her hair, "I missed you."

"You too," she replied, squeezing her arms around him.

"Could we maybe get out of the rain before starting the flirtathon?" the Doctor asked impatiently.

Jack let Rose go and turned to the Doctor. "Now, if you were feeling left out, you should've just said so."

The Doctor was swept into a similar hug to the one that Rose had just shared with Jack, and also received an additional kiss smacked against his forehead. Rose was pretty sure the reluctance on the Doctor's part was just an act. Probably the Doctor was trying to re-establish his manly street-cred after the digs she and Donna had taken at him.

"I'll have a hug, if they're going around," Donna said. True to her word, she was looking at Jack as if he was just her type.

Well, Jack was everyone's type, much the same way everyone was Jack's type.

Jack just laughed and reached out for Donna's hand. He raised it to his mouth and kissed it. "Captain Jack Harkness," he introduced himself.

Donna looked pleased enough by that gesture to be content with the lack of hug. "Donna Noble," she responded.

"No, come on, really," the Doctor said. "Getting out of the rain now would be nice."

Jack led them down into the Hub via invisible lift. Rose had never actually been inside Torchwood 3 in the other universe. She wondered whether the entrance there was the same as here. The lift seemed more Jack's style than Torchwood's. Much like the Hub itself. She doubted that the other version of Torchwood 3 had a pterodactyl just swooping around as if it owned the place, for example.

"Well that was a bit impressive," Donna said, looking back up at the place from where they'd descended. "And definitely less obvious than having several people walk out of a tiny little police box all the time. Although, don't people see you disappearing into a hole in the ground sometimes?"

"It's got a perception filter that stops people from noticing," Jack explained.

"So does the TARDIS!" the Doctor said indignantly. "When was the last time anyone on the street noticed us going in or out of the TARDIS? And anyway, your perception filter is clearly from TARDIS technology. Stolen."

Jack shrugged. "Yeah, well, when you park the TARDIS and then let a Slitheen open the Rift around it, things tend to get left behind."

"All right," Donna said, sounding annoyed. "This whole talking in secret we-all-have-history-together code has to stop. Now. Could you give a bit of a translation for those of us who don't speak the old-time-travelling-friends dialect?"

"It doesn't matter," the Doctor said. "Just a bit of technical flim-flam, really. There's much more interesting things to see and talk about in here. Come on, Donna. Jack and Rose need to have a bit of a chat. Lots of Torchwood things to catch up on. I'll show you around."

"You don't even know your way around yourself," Jack said.

"I'm clever. We'll manage. Come on."

"There's a dinosaur," Donna said suddenly, pointing. She sounded completely in awe.

"Yep, and lots more strange things besides, I'm sure. Let's go see it all," the Doctor offered.

"Just help yourself, then," Jack said, sounding just slightly put out.

The Doctor met his gaze. "I seem to recall inviting you into my home and giving you free reign more than once. Not going to extend the same courtesy?"

"I know you," Jack accused. "You're going to go about dismantling all the technology that you don't think we should have as soon as I'm not looking."

"You think you looking would stop me?" Doctor asked, eyebrows raised.

Jack rolled his eyes. "Fine. Whatever. Go. Watch out for Weevils."

"Weevils?" Donna asked.

"We'll just avoid those, I think," the Doctor said hastily. "Not really worth a visit."

Jack directed Rose to the seat beside his desk as the other two headed off. "So, not that I'm complaining, but I thought the Doctor would have been the one who'd want to talk to me about Torchwood things. He's usually the man with the answers, from memory. What, is he trying to delegate now?"

"Actually, this time I'm the one with the answers. Well, he knows most of them too, but only because I told him."

Jack contemplated her for a while. "Rose Tyler," he said finally, "you've grown up."

"Yeah," she said. "I spent some time in a parallel universe. You know how it is."

"Not so much, actually. I'm a one-universe kind of guy. But you couldn't have been there too long yourself, anyway. You still look so young." He ran his eyes appreciatively down her body.

Rose shrugged. "Well, I aged gracefully."

Jack froze, turning suddenly horrified eyes to hers. "Rose. Oh, don't tell me ..."

"No," she said quickly. "I'm not immortal. I can die. I just don't age."

"Well," Jack said. "Pity I couldn't have gotten that curse instead."

He'd meant it as a joke, Rose could tell, but she still took it like a punch to the stomach. "Oh Jack, I'm so sorry," she said, her face crumbling.

"Oh, no," Jack said, sliding his seat across the floor on its wheels so that he could put his arms around her. Even though only the top halves of them were in contact, that second hug felt so much more personal than the one outside. Maybe it was just because they were alone now, or maybe it was because the current hug was about so much more than just a hello between old friends. "No, Rose, _I'm_ sorry. That was a stupid thing to say. It's not your fault."

"It is, really," she contradicted. "But thanks for saying it."

"I'm sort of all right with it now, though," he offered.

"Again, such a lie," Rose said. "How long has it been for you?"

"A hundred and fifty years, give or take."

It was strange talking about something so monumental with her face still practically buried in Jack's shirt, but Rose found she wasn't at all interested in pulling out of the extended hug. It was nice, just being held.

"You've been around long enough to know what it's like to lose everyone, then," Rose said. "You'll never be all right with that."

"Well, no," Jack agreed. "But I don't hate the world anymore. And I don't _want_ to die."

"Good," Rose said. "I don't want you to die, either."

"I got that impression, yeah," Jack beamed. "As compliments go, 'I like you so much I want you to live forever' can't really be topped."

Rose burst out laughing, but she felt tears running down her cheeks as well. God, it'd been a weird few days. She'd never been through such a concentrated emotional maelstrom before. With her life being the way it was, that was really saying something.

"You know," she said. "Every time I imagined seeing you again, I thought I'd make sure I looked immaculate. I wanted to impress you. So of course I look like a wreck when the reality rolls around."

"You're beautiful," Jack insisted. "Always."

"Yeah, well, you can't see my face at the moment, or you might take that back," Rose said meekly.

"Never," Jack said.

"Thanks," Rose sniffed.

"So, how long has it been for you?" Jack asked after her crying had quieted.

"Coming up on five hundred years, in a few decades," Rose admitted.

Jack pulled out of their hug so he could look at her speculatively. "God," he said. "What the hell are you crying for me for, then?"

"It's easier not to think about myself, for one thing," Rose said simply.

"Yeah," Jack commiserated.

They sat in a strangely companionable silence for a while.

"So five hundred years off on your own, making your own life in a parallel universe and, what, you woke up one day and thought, 'I think I might look that Doctor bloke up today'?"

"Oh, yeah," Rose said sardonically. "It was just a passing fancy. Then the walls of the universe went and closed. Damn my luck, eh?"

Jack chuckled. "Bet you never thought about him or anything, stuck over there."

"Not even once."

Jack's voice was serious, though, when he said, "You waited half a millennium for him and I bet he hasn't even kissed you, has he?"

"Once," Rose admitted. "It was all very heat of the moment."

"Well, Jack said, "good luck Donna Noble, I say. I remember the amount of unresolved sexual tension there was on the TARDIS with you two in denial. I bet it's even worse now. She'll go mad within the month."

"You could help her out with that," Rose suggested. "Come with us."

"Not that I enjoy saying no to _any_ proposition you're willing to offer me, but," Jack gestured around, "I've got things to do here. A team to run. And we're not doing so well at the moment, so it's more important than ever that I stay."

"Where are they?" Rose asked.

Jack shrugged. "Yesterday was huge. I told them both to take the morning off."

"Both?" Rose asked, surprised. Torchwood 3 in the parallel world had significantly more than three staff members.

"We've suffered some losses recently," Jack admitted soberly.

"I'm sorry."

"Yeah. Me too. They were good people."

"So are you." Rose placed her hand on Jack's knee comfortingly. "Don't stop letting them in," she said. "They live, and you love them, and then they die on you and it hurts. But don't stop. I made that mistake. I've been alone for what feels like forever, because once you lose touch, it starts to seem easier to just get on with it on your own. I still cared about people, but I never really _connected_. I missed that. Don't let that happen to you."

Jack shook his head incredulously. "You know, I knew you were going to grow into a force to be reckoned with, but you're still somehow so much more than even I expected. The Doctor doesn't know what he's missing. If you two weren't so insanely hung up on each other, I'd counter your offer from before and ask _you_ to stay with _me_."

Rose laughed mirthlessly. "Oh, no. If nothing else, I need a break from working for Torchwood."

"Ah, so we've got that in common too?" Jack asked. "I don't know about you, but I think I've somehow devoted the rest of my very long life to this place without even meaning to. It just sort of sucks you in."

"I know. I got driven out of the country by Torchwood by the end, and I still ended up running another branch, not really working for them on the books so much. I went a bit rogue, you see."

"Rogue," Jack repeated. "You know, every word that comes out of your mouth makes you seem even more attractive. Rose Tyler, rogue Torchwood agent, defeating the aliens across multiple universes, and looking dazzling even when she's crying. You better watch it or you'll end up sounding more impressive than the Doctor. Is that why he sent you in to tell me about this whole Daleks in the sky and then suddenly dead on the streets thing? Because you're running the show now?"

"I wish," Rose said. "No, it's because l was the one who did that."

Jack raised his eyebrows. "Oh? That's twice now, that I know of. Have you set up a Dalek Removal business, then? There might be some money in that. You're certainly setting quite the standard."

"Don't joke about it," Rose warned sharply. "Just don't." She paused for a while, and Jack let the silence go on for as long as she needed it to. "Did they all scream down here? When they died? Or was that just the ones closest to the centre of it? The ones on the ship _shrieked_, and I still can't get the sound out of my head. The whole species died painfully, and I did that."

"You did the right thing," Jack said. "You've seen what they do if they aren't stopped."

This was what Rose really needed right now. As much as she appreciated that he was trying to let the terrible thing she'd done go without throwing Rose's blame in her face, the Doctor could never say she'd been right and completely mean it. Jack could comfort her that way because he believed without a doubt that she _was_ right, even when she didn't quite entirely believe it herself.

"I committed genocide," Rose said. "Every single one of them is dead."

"To save every single one of us. Well," he rethought, "except me. I'd have been the only non-Dalek in the universe eventually, probably. Getting killed over and over for kicks. That's always fun."

Oh, Rose thought, Jack was obviously _exactly_ what she needed, because with that thought in mind she'd do it again in a heartbeat. She couldn't stand the idea of him tortured like that, not just physically, but with the knowledge that he was even more alone in the universe than the Doctor was now.

"Every now and then I wish I hadn't fallen for the Doctor," Rose said. "_You_, Captain Jack Harkness, are just about perfect for me. Well, except for the whole womanising ... man-ising? Random species-ising? Is there even a word for that?"

Jack laughed. "It's called being open to new experiences. And you'd be surprised, actually. I've settled down a bit."

"Not that much. You're still an outrageous flirt."

She was glad for that. If Jack ever stopped flirting, she'd worry that the world was ending. The concept of it just didn't seem right.

"Yeah, there is that," he admitted. "But I'm always faithful, when I make any kind of commitment."

"Oh?" Rose prompted. "You've got someone now, then, do you?"

Jack smiled slightly. "Not something that will last forever. But we're together, so I'm off the market for now."

Rose squeezed his hand. "I'm glad. Well, I'm heartbroken on behalf of the rest of the universe that you're all flirt and no follow-through now – that seems to go against the natural order. But still."

They didn't talk any further about Jack's life after their parting, nor about Rose's. Instead, they mainly talked shop, including Rose explaining everything she knew had to appear in Jack's report without explicitly telling him he had to write about those things, or what he had to do with the report to make sure she'd find it. The future preferred to look after itself in these time loop situations, Rose had found. It was when you pushed too hard to make sure everything happened just right that everything tended to go to hell. Jack was a smart guy. He'd do what he needed to without her having to give him a step-by-step.

By the time the Doctor called out to her, echoed by Donna complaining about gunk that something down in the Cells had apparently projected at her, Rose had to admit she was sorry to leave.

"Don't worry. You'll come back and see me," Jack insisted as they said goodbye.

"Cocky," Rose noted.

"For good reason. Who wouldn't come back for _this_?"

He had a point.

This time Donna got a hug as well as Rose and the Doctor. Donna seemed inordinately pleased about that.

"Sorted?" the Doctor asked Rose as they walked into the TARDIS.

"Yeah," Rose replied. Not just the information for the reports, either, she thought. She considered that the Doctor might have been well aware of that. Strictly speaking, there was no reason for him to have excused himself while she and Jack talked just so they could share invasion details.

Actually, Rose thought, leaving them alone might just have been the most emotionally-aware thing the Doctor had ever done in all of the time she'd been with him.

"Thank you," she said, infusing the appreciation into her voice. She reached out and squeezed his hand.

There was no point in not taking the opportunity for positive enforcement of that sort of behaviour, she thought.

"So," Donna said, interrupting their little moment. "There's a Tesco down the street from here. Forget London, I say. Milk runs to Cardiff, from now on. The Doctor can go off and get supplies, and you and I will go and visit Jack, Rose."

"Why should I have to go for the milk? You barely even know Jack!" the Doctor protested.

It was a sign of how aware he was of just how much Jack had helped Rose that he didn't even seem to consider protesting the idea of visiting Cardiff more regularly. Or maybe the Doctor just wanted to see Jack as well. That last hug _had_ seemed to linger.

Rose smirked. She caught herself and nearly wiped that look right back off her face guiltily. Then she had a moment of clarity, stopping and wondering at herself. There was no reason for that. Smiling didn't mean she didn't still feel the guilt. It just meant that she could feel other things beyond that.

She wasn't suddenly going to be fixed overnight, no matter who she talked to about the things she'd seen and done. But, strangely, living for a long time proved that life was short. Rose didn't want to be buried in sadness forever, especially not now that she was right back where she wanted to be.

She looked to the Doctor and joked, "How is Donna supposed to get to know Jack better if she can't spend time with him?"

"Ooh," Donna said. "Someone to back me up against him. I like this. This is good."

Rose thought so, too.

The Doctor sighed and wisely didn't comment.

This – the three of them together in the TARDIS – was going to work, Rose decided. It would more than work, actually. It was clearly going to be fantastic. 

* * *

"You know," Donna said three days later in one of the TARDIS bathrooms as she helped Rose dye her hair darker, "you don't have to change to get his attention. He already hasn't got eyes for anything but you. And anyway, I would have thought the blonde look would work better on the men."

"I like light brown," Rose said. "I only dyed it blonde again in the first place to make it sort of more seamless for me to come back. I really didn't want to see that moment of 'hey, gee, that random brunette woman who's just appeared out of nowhere looks slightly familiar' on the Doctor's face, even though I'm sure he would have been quick to look properly at me and realise the truth. It was better this way. In the long run, though, blonde draws too much attention. So it has to go."

And the regrowth was already getting ridiculous, Rose mused. No wonder she'd decided to lay off the peroxide centuries ago.

"The Doctor told me about your life, a little," Donna admitted. "He said that you've been alive for a long time, and you'd been sort of hiding out in that other world. I'm sorry if you didn't want him to say anything. You can't shut that man up, sometimes. Most of the time, actually."

"No," Rose said, "it's fine. It saves me telling the story again. But yeah, I've had a lot of years of sort of trying to avoid being noticed. By people on the street, at least. The people in a position to know who I was always had plenty of notice to spare for me. Too much, sometimes."

"You and him are a lot alike, you know," Donna said. "You've both seen so much."

"Jack, too," Rose agreed. "If someone had told you a few years ago that one day soon you'd be travelling the stars and hanging around with three people whose collective age is about a one and a half thousand years, I doubt you'd have believed it."

"Never," Donna agreed. "I never even believed it when everyone kept banging on about spaceships over London and people on the roof edges, or metal men appearing all over the world. I thought the world had had a collective hangover, or something, that they couldn't see that it was all hoaxes."

"And now you're the one always in the thick of alien invasions and stuff," Rose said, understanding the importance of that.

"Yeah," Donna agreed. "And it's brilliant. Who'd ever want to give this up for that life back on Earth?"

Rose knew that a lot of people the Doctor had travelled with over the years had decided to do just that, even though some of them, like Sarah Jane, had regretted it afterwards. But, as for herself, she absolutely agreed with that sentiment. Who'd ever want to leave the Doctor?

Presuming they had a choice, that was.

Donna was clearly a much different woman now than she'd been before she met the Doctor, Rose reflected. Much like Rose herself had changed so much because of him. In a way, Rose identified with Donna just as much as she did Jack or the Doctor. They had both been just two super-ordinary London women on a path leading into a dead end, and then their lives had been made so much better by meeting a crazy alien in a blue box who showed them how much better their lives could be.

Whatever else she might feel about what she'd done, looking back Rose couldn't feel sorry for saving Donna from having to go back to that life of not noticing the important things about the world around her, let alone about herself.

A while after Donna had left Rose to clean herself and the bathroom up, Rose emerged into the console room.

The Doctor smiled at her. "Rose Tyler," he said, making it sound like some sort of grand proclamation. "See? I always know you, regardless of hair colour."

"You like the brown?" she asked.

"I love the brown," he returned.

Rose very nearly blushed. Apart from an aborted attempt on a beach, and another interrupted try on a space bus, that was about as close as he'd ever come to saying the three words that had been hanging over their heads ever since a Dalek in an underground bunker had tossed that middle word into the mix.

"Well," she said flippantly, downplaying the importance of what he'd said. "You would like it. Brown all around. Now we match, right?"

"Yes," the Doctor said, looking suddenly serious. "We do." 

* * *

"I love you!" Malcolm said one last time.

Rose beamed. She didn't think she'd ever met a full-grown man that she would describe as purely adorable until that moment, but Malcolm was definitely that.

It occurred to her that he'd told the Doctor he loved him more times than _she_ had, and he'd just met him. Well, maybe Malcolm wasn't just a genius. Maybe Malcolm was also just plain _smart_.

The Doctor went off chatting with the UNIT Captain who'd introduced herself to them and saluted them (they both wished people would stop doing that). Rose, left to her own devices for the moment, ducked off to the side to say goodbye to Nathan and Barclay, who were lined up waiting to be scanned by the UNIT officers. They were good blokes, Rose thought. The sort of guys the Doctor might have considered taking off with him in the TARDIS, probably, if she and Donna would have stood for the testosterone infusion of two blokes that young hanging about.

"You make a move on that Tina of yours soon, you hear me?" Rose said as she waved them off. She turned and ran directly into the Captain.

"With me for debriefing, Miss Tyler," she directed.

"Oh, but really, I don't –"

"We'll keep it concise. With me," she insisted.

Rose looked around for the Doctor, hoping he'd extract her from the situation. The Doctor, however, had bigger things to worry about.

"You went off on an adventure without me?" Donna boomed at him.

Donna stormed through UNIT officers and police alike, brushing them off like flies, and zeroed in immediately on the Doctor. Rose watched with amusement from a few metres away where she'd been practically physically dragged by the Captain. It was the Doctor's fault, really, on both counts. If he'd just been willing to explain what had really happened to UNIT beyond the garbled techno-babble explanations that he'd shared with Malcolm over the phone, he wouldn't have been free to be yelled at by Donna, and Rose wouldn't have become the paperwork scapegoat.

Yeah, Rose thought with silent resentment towards UNIT, pick on the human. Even travelling with the Doctor, somehow Rose couldn't seem to escape from the bureaucracy of Torchwood, UNIT and the like.

"You wanted to see your Mum and Grandad for Easter!" Rose heard the Doctor say defensively. "What did you expect Rose and I to do? Hang around, getting in the way?"

"Well, what I _didn't_ expect was to see you on the news stepping out of a double-decker bus that you'd apparently decided to just take for a spin. _In the sky_."

"I'm sorry. There was this excitation that showed up on the TARDIS sensors. It suggested that there was a hole in the fabric of reality, and it really didn't belong on early 21st century Earth, and so Rose and I got on a bus, and things just sort of ... happened. It's hardly the first time I've suddenly ended up on another planet without meaning to, is it?"

"You went to another _planet_ without me?" Donna accused, disbelieving.

Rose could see the Doctor's flinch at having let that slip. "I wouldn't have gone off without you on purpose, I swear."

Donna stood there being silently angry for a while longer before she slapped the Doctor across the arm.

"Ow!" the Doctor cried. Baby, Rose thought. It hadn't even looked hard. "What was that for?"

"For nearly getting yourself _and_ Rose killed, dumbo," Donna said more quietly, though Rose still caught the words.

She smiled, before the Captain cleared her throat pointedly and directed Rose's attention back to the debriefing she was supposed to be going through.

Rose rolled her eyes, but answered the questions as they were posed to her regardless.

She couldn't help but be slightly distracted again, however, when that Lady Christina woman freed herself from the UNIT men trying to check her over and pranced up to the Doctor.

"Little blue box! Just like you said," she greeted. She looped her arm around the Doctor's and Rose frowned.

That was about enough flirting for one day, Rose thought, especially since she was certain she'd been giving off some pretty obvious 'Keep Off' signs on that other planet earlier.

Donna seemed to agree. "Who're you, then?" she said, sounding a little hostile.

"Lady Christina de Souza," she introduced herself in that overly posh tone of hers. As if anyone would believe that wasn't put on, Rose mused. "You didn't tell me you had another woman waiting back on Earth, Doctor. _Quite_ the ladies man, aren't you?"

"Oi, not so much with the flirting, thanks," Donna said. "He's taken."

"Oh?" Christina literally took a step back. She seemed to size up the two of them. "You don't _seem_ like a couple."

"Not _us_!" Donna said. She sighed in frustration and turned to the Doctor.

She slapped the Doctor's arm again.

"No, really, _ow_!" the Doctor said. "This is abuse. What did I do this time?"

"You are _completely_ ridiculous, you know that? You've been out and about on an alien planet with random women hanging off you, and you don't think to just mention to them, 'Oh, by the way, this is Rose Tyler, my significant other, the love of my life, and the woman who I stare after like a kicked puppy whenever she leaves the room without me'? Blimey, I honestly don't know how Rose puts up with you."

Rose tried very hard to hide her smile and turned away just in time so that the Doctor didn't catch her staring when he looked in her direction.

Rose finished with the questions, and pried herself away from the UNIT Captain.

Christina at least had the grace to look slightly uncomfortable when Rose arrived at the Doctor's side.

"So," Christina said, changing tracks. "Clearly you travel with a bit of an entourage. Is there room for one more in your little blue box?"

Donna made a noise that suggested she couldn't quite believe the gall of the woman in front of her.

"Uh, not so much," the Doctor said, squirming a little. "Sort of full-up, you understand."

"You told me it was bigger on the inside," Christina reminded him.

"It is. But, well, Donna's luggage alone takes up half the place," the Doctor said. "There's barely breathing room left after that."

"Oi."

Christina gave him a pleading look. "But I can't stay here. I'll be arrested. I'll go to prison."

Rose could tell the Doctor was considering offering her a ride out at the very least, but Rose couldn't see her leaving once she got inside the TARDIS. Rose couldn't imagine anyone wanting to leave once they saw what it was like.

Rose contemplated Lady Christina, who was too bold, and willing to risk life and limb, and who spoke fluent French, and had incredibly liberated morals. In any other circumstances, Rose thought she might have sort of been impressed by her, or even outright liked her.

Christina didn't get any more time to plead her case. At that moment a police officer arrived to drag her away.

"Go on then, Doctor," Rose said quietly. "Help her."

The Doctor smiled at her and pulled out his sonic screwdriver with a flourish.

When Christina flew away in the bus, Rose couldn't say she wasn't a bit pleased to see the last of her. But then, she was also sort of glad she'd got away.

The Earth would probably be a much more interesting place with Lady Christina de Souza tripping about in a big red flying bus, even if she probably would just go and get herself arrested again within the month.

"You're such a bleeding heart," Rose said with a laugh.

"Me? You told me to do it!" the Doctor said.

"Mainly because I could tell you wanted to. Come on." Rose wrapped her arm around his waist, consciously one-upping the grip Christina had had on his arm earlier. She used the grip to steer him into the TARDIS with her. "I think you owe Donna a trip to make up for leaving her behind."

"You left her behind, too," the Doctor muttered.

"You're the driver," Donna said. "Your TARDIS, your responsibility."

"Ooh," the Doctor said, looking pained. "Two women on the TARDIS. Whose idea was that, again?"

Donna smirked. "Didn't I tell you ages ago? We outnumber you now."

"What do you think, Donna?" Rose asked. "Shopping, finally?"

"Shopping," Donna agreed. "And you're carrying the bags, space man."

The Doctor looked highly put upon, but he did eventually capitulate. He flung the TARDIS into action sort of regretfully.

"What have I got myself into?" he asked no one in particular. 

* * *

"What's wrong?" Rose asked. "I seem to remember it practically took a battalion of men dragging you to get you to let me visit my Mum back in the day. So what's with suddenly deciding out of the blue to drop us off at Donna's?"

"I told you," the Doctor said, "I've got some work to do on the TARDIS, and it's not the sort that I can just get done while you two go off and get your usual eight hours of sleep. It'll take days, maybe weeks. So I'll leave you two here, go off and sit the TARDIS in the Vortex for a while, and then be back for you once just a few hours have passed from your perspective."

It was a somewhat believable story, as the Doctor's explanations tended to go. Rose, however, wasn't stupid. She could see how twitchy he was about it, and she'd noticed how his hand kept straying sort of self-consciously to his pocket as if there was something in there he didn't want her to see.

There was more going on than just some TARDIS repairs. After all, they'd been parked in the Vortex together while he fixed this or that for days at a time before, particularly back when he'd been Northern and leather-clad and slightly more mechanically-obsessed. Rose had sat around on the falling-apart captain's seat talking to him while he worked, and she'd got the impression that he'd enjoyed the company. It didn't make all that much sense that he wouldn't be keen for them to hang around a bit while he did whatever he needed to now.

Still, he was resolved, and even though Rose could probably out-stubborn him if she tried, she wasn't sure the ensuing fight would be worth it when she wasn't even all that sure what they'd be fighting over.

"Just a few hours, right?" Rose confirmed. "Not days later, or, I dunno, twelve months?"

"I'm never going to live that down with you, am I?" the Doctor sighed.

"I've just spent long enough away from you and the TARDIS that I'd prefer not to add to that if possible," Rose replied seriously.

The Doctor pulled her into a hug unexpectedly then. Oh, Rose thought happily. That was nice. He kissed the top of her head, and that was even nicer again.

"Never again," he said, and Rose's heart felt like it was clenching. "Not if I have anything to say about it. Two or three hours, no more. I'll triple check that I'm in the right time before I step out of the TARDIS, I swear."

"All right," Rose said as Donna bustled into the console room. "Do what you've got to do."

"Right, are we off?" Donna asked.

"Yeah," Rose said. "I can't wait to meet your Grandad. He sounds like a character."

As they walked off towards London, which was waiting just outside the TARDIS doors, Rose sneaked a look back at the Doctor and caught a glimpse of him pulling his psychic paper out of the pocket he'd been guarding throughout their whole conversation, and flipping it open to look at it.

Oh, she thought. _Oh_.

So it had started.

"What's he being all secretive about, anyway?" Donna asked as soon as Rose had shut the door behind her.

Rose forced a smile and shrugged. "It doesn't matter."

She thought of the message he'd obviously just gone off to answer, written in teasing tones and probably signed with a kiss, and tried to convince herself that it really didn't. 

* * *

"_Everything_?" Rose asked incredulously, looking around in wonder. "What, really? Absolutely everything?"

"Everything," the Doctor confirmed. "The grass you're standing on, the buildings down the way, that streetlight over there. Everything you can see. One hundred percent. Even the clouds in the sky; they're fairy floss."

"I don't see what you two are so pleased with yourselves about," Donna said. "What's the point of a planet where everything's made of gingerbread and stuff, anyway? You could just get sweets right out of a packet."

Rose and the Doctor had had some experience dealing with gingerbread houses, though. Rose knew that the Doctor was likely remembering that as much as she was. She could see the underlying gesture in his bringing them here.

He wanted to give her a gingerbread house of possibilities that she didn't need to be afraid to touch, for once.

She threaded her hand through the Doctor's and smiled. "I think it's brilliant," she said.

Donna huffed. "Well, when I put on weight from all the calories, I'll know who to blame, won't I?"

Rose scoffed. "Put on weight? Travelling with the Doctor? Not likely. Not with all that running to work it off for us."

She took off down the hill towards the gingerbread housing and infrastructure, pulling a laughing Doctor behind her. 

* * *

"Oh god, oh god, oh god," Rose kept mumbling, somewhat aware that that annoying noise was the sound of her babbling hysterically, but still somehow feeling too disconnected from her voice to stop herself.

Apparently the Doctor had had enough of it, though, because he snapped, "Rose!" loudly enough to stun her into silence.

Rose stepped into a small ditch in the ground and nearly fell from the combination of the loss of balance and Donna's weight pressing down on her shoulders.

"Faster," the Doctor pleaded. "We have to go faster."

They probably could have run much more swiftly if the Doctor had been able to lift Donna on his own and run with her, but he was a bit too injured to completely support her weight and stay upright. Instead, Donna was suspended between Rose and the Doctor, and Rose was having trouble keeping up with the Doctor even though she was the only one among them who was barely hurt.

Oh god, she thought again, thinking of Donna, but this time she somehow prevented it from erupting as a sort of panic-stricken mantra once more.

She could see the TARDIS, finally, and she thanked whoever was out there listening, god or not. Nearly out, she promised herself. They were nearly to safety, with those stronger-than-wood doors to keep the gunfire and explosions and other signs of raging war outside.

Donna moaned and the Doctor swore for the first time in Rose's memory.

"She's waking up," he panted. "Come _on_, Rose."

God, Rose thought yet again. Surely Donna couldn't wake up like that. They had to get back to the TARDIS. They had to fix her, so that she'd wake up free of pain and with everything just as it should be, complaining loud enough to be heard from the other side of the ship.

Rose tried to put on a further burst of speed, but she wasn't sure how successful she was. Her perception of the world around her seemed sort of sluggish. Everything was moving wrongly, and Rose's brain didn't quite feel like it could catch up.

Rose had lost a bit of blood, but she didn't think that was to blame. It hadn't been enough for that. No, Rose suspected her shock was more psychological than anything.

Two hours ago things had been fine. Then they'd strayed too far from the TARDIS and all hell, pretty much literally, had broken loose.

It seemed to take forever, but they reached the TARDIS eventually. Rose wanted to collapse, but the Doctor's short tone reminded her that Donna needed to get to the infirmary, and now. Being inside the console room wasn't going to do her any good, beyond the obvious plus of being out of further danger.

When they finally arrived at the infirmary, the Doctor removed Donna's weight from Rose to slide Donna onto a gurney. Rose staggered off to the side, leaning against a cabinet. Her eyes fell on Donna's leg for the first time since they'd hightailed in out of the battlefield. Rose gagged, having to suppress the need to be sick all over the place.

"You can help her, right?" Rose asked in a small voice. She was nearly 500 years old, now, and still at times she caught herself sounding exactly like a scared child.

"She'll live," the Doctor grunted, limping slightly around the room to gather what he needed. Rose thought that even though that was spectacular news, that wasn't the answer she'd been looking for.

The Doctor injected something into Donna's arm, and she stopped stirring into consciousness, falling completely still.

Rose turned away, then, unable to look at the blood and bared muscle and bone anymore. It was just too gruesome, even for a woman who'd killed thousands and thousands of beings over the years. Nothing would ever harden her to a sight like that.

Even centuries into her existence, charity groups on that alternate world had still been banging on about undiscovered landmines in poor nations. That issue had seemed so distant, then, when she'd been so much more worried about deaths from local alien attacks. She'd never thought that kind of tragedy would ever befall someone she actually knew.

"Doctor," Rose insisted. "Please tell me you can ... her leg ..."

The Doctor paused in what he was doing just long enough to meet her eyes. "There's not enough left," he told her honestly.

Rose's breath all whooshed out in a strange sort of huff sound.

The Doctor went back to working, and started nattering about healing techniques so fast that Rose couldn't quite keep up. She thought he was talking to distract himself from his own pain and to distance himself from the reality of what he was doing slightly, rather than in any attempt to explain the procedures to Rose.

Rose did, however, catch the gist. Not even equipment as advanced as in the TARDIS could grow back a human limb. Donna's leg was gone from just above the knee down, and would be for the rest of her life. The Doctor could heal the skin over and practically magic the physical pain away, but there was nothing else to be done.

Rose thought of a timeline that would never be lived now, where Donna Noble had existed safe and sound in a relatively content life never knowing she was worth anything. In avoiding that, Rose had never meant for something like _this_ to happen.

This Donna remembered the Doctor, and she remembered all the brilliant things she'd learned about herself as well, but Rose wished it didn't need to be at such a cost.

"Maybe you should go," the Doctor suggested curtly. "There's nothing you can do here."

Rose heard the unspoken addition of, "And you're just getting in the way."

Even at his most stressed and cruel and rude, she didn't think the Doctor would ever actually say that to her. Not when she was hurting now as much as he was. However, she heard the way the words were implied nonetheless.

"All right," Rose whispered, and went out the door.

She didn't get far, sinking down onto the grating in the hallway and leaning her head against the cool wall. Tears started to stream down her face. She hid it against her knees, which she'd pulled up to her chest, letting the material of her trousers soak up the hot drops of liquid.

Rose hugged herself, and she cried.


	4. Chapter Four

Author's Notes: This chapter contains adult material. It also references a bit of Classic Who and Torchwood: Children of Earth. Don't worry though, you don't need to have any familiarity at all with these things to follow this fic. 

* * *

Chapter Four

"You don't have to," Rose insisted. "You could stay."

Donna Noble just might be more stubborn than both her and the Doctor, though. Rose thought that was quite a feat.

"How'm I going to escape aliens when I can't run? It's all about the running, remember."

"We'll avoid invasions for a while," the Doctor said briskly, not looking up at either of them. "Just long enough for you to get used to the prosthetic. 28th century technology; you'll be up and running in no time."

Donna shook her head. "You know as well as I do that it'll probably be months until I can walk properly without any support, let alone run. Technology is all well and good, but we decided against the creepy cyber-whatever leg things, remember? This is just a plain old metal prosthetic."

"Still ..." Rose cajoled.

"No. You can't stay out of danger for two minutes. And the TARDIS has got stairs and uneven floors and things all over the place; I can't get used to walking again like that, tripping over everything."

"Donna," the Doctor said, looking a little stricken, but still purposely focusing on whatever he could find to putter about with in the infirmary rather than either of the two women in the room.

Rose truly loved Donna then, for acting so strong for the Doctor's benefit when she was the one who was hurt.

"You're not just going to dump me back home," Donna said. "I know the TARDIS phone number. That's right, I looked it up. Ha! So you'll never be rid of me now. I'll be ringing and ringing until you get so sick of it you'll have to give in and take me for a trip to some shopping planet somewhere."

The Doctor finally met Donna's eyes.

"But I can't be with you full-time. Not for now," Donna said.

"I'm sorry," the Doctor said, pulling her into an awkward hug, with her still sitting down and him hunched over uncomfortably. Still, awkward or not, Rose thought that they both needed that.

"I would've stayed forever," Donna said in a much quieter and more emotional voice as the Doctor backed off. Oh, Donna, Rose thought.

The Doctor nodded. Then he suddenly sounded overly peppy. "You will. Like you said. Regular trips. I'll be back for you all the time, just you wait. And what human wants to actually _live_ on the TARDIS anyway? It's bonkers, my ship."

"Hey!" Rose chimed in indignantly, "what am I?" Donna looked at Rose, her expression conveying gratitude for the attempt to help keep the Doctor's mood light.

The Doctor continued, ignoring Rose, "No, you'll have a house with carpets and doors and stuff, and a time ship ready to take you into the stars whenever you want. Best of both worlds."

"Yeah, that sounds nice," Donna said. "Bit of a brilliant life."

Rose thought it was a sign just how much the Doctor loved and needed Donna that he was willing to accept such a solid and regular tie to Earth. Years ago, it had taken him ages to give in and let the Powell Estate be a sort of home base for Rose's sake, and more recently he'd only been willing for them to visit Donna's family and the Torchwood Hub fairly sporadically. This was more than that. This was a promise, not 'I might swing by if I have time, but don't expect it, because I've probably got better things to do'.

Rose found that she was proud of the Doctor for agreeing to it so readily. It must have been difficult for him, a man who normally never went back, to make a promise like that.

He needed Donna. That was part of the reason her injury and subsequent decision to leave had hit him so hard. The other, of course, was that he was blaming himself. Rose was hardly surprised about that, given his history of seemingly seeking out and taking blame wherever he could find it, like some sort of addict.

Rose insisted that the Doctor land the TARDIS just outside the front door of the Noble house so that Rose could go in and talk to Wilf and Sylvia first. Things would be hard enough without the Doctor landing in the middle of the house unexpectedly and Donna's family first finding out about Donna's accident by actually seeing it firsthand. That would all be too much to deal with for everyone, Donna especially.

The Doctor had trouble understanding those sorts of basic things about humans sometimes, but Rose tried to steer him right where she could.

Rose had never seen Sylvia look so upset. She seemed to spend all her time railing on Donna about her jobs (or lack thereof), and her perhaps slightly overambitious aims regarding men, and all sorts of other things. When it came down to it, though, she was clearly completely willing to support her daughter when it was needed.

All things considered, she was really just like a Mum should be.

Rose missed her own Mum – really, properly missed her, in a wishing she was there with Rose right now sort of way – for the first time in years. She'd lost her mother so long ago that even though she often thought of her, she rarely felt the loss really keenly anymore, as she once had. There had been other miseries to take its place. But sometimes a woman just needed someone to gripe with and then lean on by turns. That was what Mums were for. Rose missed having that.

When the Doctor carried Donna out of the TARDIS, Wilf looked like he wanted to run over and pluck Donna right out of his arms, though they all knew his body was too frail these days to allow it. Instead he merely held the front door open for them and looked like he was about to cry.

Once the Doctor had gently set Donna down on her bed upstairs, he re-emerged from the room, leaving Donna and her family to have some time alone for a while.

This was hard enough for Rose, and she'd only known Donna a few months. The Doctor had been with her for over a year, and her family ...

Rose and the Doctor stood quietly in the hallway, both leaning against the wall, not even looking at each other. Rose reached for his hand, but he pulled it away.

"Don't," he said quietly. "Just ... not right now."

Rose tried not to take it personally, but it was difficult.

When Donna's mother and grandfather came out, Wilf gave them a quick nod to let them know they should go in. Sylvia, on the other hand, avoided so much as looking at the Doctor. It was clear she blamed him as much as he blamed himself. Rose was supremely grateful that Sylvia had chosen to hold her tongue this one time, because the Doctor hardly needed the extra guilt heaped on top of what was already there.

"Hey," Rose greeted when they walked in.

"Don't sound so bleak," Donna said, fake cheer bolstering her.

"We're going to head off," the Doctor blurted dispassionately. Rose elbowed him sharply. Just when she'd thought he'd gained a bit of tact – he'd known well enough to leave Donna, Wilf and Sylvia alone earlier, at the least – he went an opened his mouth again.

"Er, I mean, we'll stay as long as you like," he hastily amended.

Donna rolled her eyes. "No, go on. You've got worlds to save."

"We'll come back this weekend," Rose promised.

Donna nodded. "I'll hold you to that," she said.

They were all silent for a moment.

Rose didn't really remember crossing the room, but she must have done, because the next thing she knew she was clinging to Donna, who was hugging her back, and the two of them were both in tears.

"I'm gonna miss you," Rose choked out.

"You too," Donna replied. "And even him."

"You're so damn strong, Donna."

"'Course I am. I'm brilliant, remember?" said Donna, somehow managing to make it sound self-effacing despite the words.

"No, really. I mean it," Rose insisted. "And don't go back to temping, hey? Do something really wonderful and brilliant so _you_ can make _us_ jealous with your stories every time we come back."

Rose felt Donna nod. "You bet I will. And take care of that lunatic. He keeps trying to get himself killed."

"Not on my watch," Rose promised.

They let go of each other, both smiling slightly through their tears.

The Doctor, Rose saw when she looked around, looked bewildered by the unexpected eruption of mixed emotions. Fair enough, Rose thought. She wasn't quite sure what had prompted it either. They'd all been holding it together so well, even if the Doctor chose to do it by completely shutting himself off.

"And you," Donna said to him, suddenly sounding all strong and a bit stern again. "Don't be an idiot. 450 years or not, she won't wait around for you forever."

Rose blushed, knowing that Donna was dead wrong about that. She'd told him forever once, a long time ago. She'd meant it. Her forever, however long that was, was his to do with as he chose. She just hoped he chose well, for both their sakes.

Rose expected the Doctor to chastise Donna, as he usually would. Instead, he just said, "Yeah."

"The weekend," Donna said. "Promise."

"The weekend," the Doctor confirmed. "And I'm going to land right in the hallway, I think, just to annoy your Mum, since Rose wouldn't let me this time."

Donna laughed, sounding choked with the tears she'd barely stopped shedding. "You do that."

It was an odd sort of goodbye, but somehow it suited those two perfectly.

And then somehow they were back in the TARDIS, and even though she'd known it was coming, Rose couldn't quite believe that they were in there without Donna. The total amount of time she'd travelled with the Doctor but without Donna was much longer than the three of them had all been together, but that had been so long ago for her. Her stronger, more recent memories were of them as a unit.

Not anymore, she thought to herself. Not for a while, at least.

"Where to?" the Doctor asked, still sounding fairly unemotional.

"That's it?" Rose asked incredulously. "Barely even stop to say goodbye and then move on just like that? God, I saw it with Jack, but I thought you two had at least dealt with it while I wasn't here. Busy saving the Earth; what was that about? But Donna ..."

"That's my life," the Doctor said darkly. "I have to move on."

"Who says? It's only like that because you make it that way!" Rose protested.

"You're one to talk," the Doctor accused. "At least I let people in to begin with. _How_ many years had it been since you had a close, personal relationship with someone before you came back here?"

If she'd been less driven by outrage at that moment, she might have fallen quiet, stung at the pointed and so-spot-on attack. But anger often provided momentum, and Rose wasn't about to allow hers to let up right then.

"Let people in?" she asked incredulously. "Really? Like me, for example? How long have I been back? Five months? Six? And have we talked about Bad Wolf Bay _at all_ in all that time? No. Has our relationship moved forward? Not so much. We're in a holding pattern, and you don't want to admit it, and I don't want to push, and it's because you _won't_ let people in that that's how we are together."

"That's different," he said brusquely.

Rose scowled. "No, it's not! You can't just shut everything out. You can't shut _me_ out! What, you think you're the only one who feels terrible? Or do you blame me or something?"

The Doctor's head jerked towards her. "How can you ask me that? Of course I don't blame you. You didn't do anything."

"I'm not just talking about Donna," Rose said. "I killed those Daleks and it broke your hearts to be part of that, but you haven't even _mentioned_ it since. That's not healthy. You haven't _dealt_ with it."

"And you have?" he shot back. "What do you want, Rose? For the two of us to spend the rest of our lives dwelling on those things?"

"No!" Rose cried. "I want you to _talk_ to me. Yell at me. _Something_. For once in your life, stop bottling everything away and Let. Me. In!"

The Doctor crossed the room in just a few of her heartbeats and grabbed her firmly, though not particularly painfully, by the shoulders. "How will that help?" he asked angrily, his face right up in hers. "I let people in and then I get them hurt, so how will it help to give up even more of myself? I give and give and give, and it all gets dragged away. It's even worse with you. When you go, you'll take _everything_ that matters."

"I'm not going to leave you," Rose swore vehemently. She didn't care that even now, with her lengthened lifespan, it was still a lie. That wasn't the point.

The Doctor kissed her, then. He brought a hand up to tangle in Rose's hair, pulling her mouth into his. Rose followed his lead willingly, running her mouth smoothly over his and then nipping his lower lip slightly, earning herself a low groan as he pulled their bodies closer.

The Doctor pulled his mouth away slightly, just enough to speak, though his body remained firmly against hers. "I can't go back after this," he warned.

Rose somehow doubted that was true, considering that they'd kissed multiple times and then kept on just as they had been before. But the Doctor pushed himself in even more tightly against her, placing a hand low (too low to be considered anything like innocent, really) on her back to hold her against him. Rose realised, shivering, that the Doctor might not be talking about just the kissing after all.

"Good," she said, and he covered her mouth with his again.

The Doctor pressed her back a little, her backside resting against the console for a moment, before apparently thinking better of it. Instead, he moved the two of them, still firmly attached at the lips, backwards through the console room into (Rose presumed, since she had her eyes closed and couldn't see) the main hallway. Unlike the kiss itself, there was no haste to the movements of their feet and bodies. It was like a well-rehearsed dance, only Rose didn't know the steps, and so had to trust him completely to lead them. Rose was actually impressed at his ability to blindly guide them through a hazardous ship. Then that brand of lesser awe got mixed up in how astonished she felt overall that he wasn't just kissing her – _initiating_ the kiss himself, even – but was also apparently leading her somewhere with a very specific purpose in mind.

Well, she'd known this version of the Doctor was an all or nothing sort of man, she supposed. And they'd been dancing around this for years, even putting aside their time apart.

Rose found herself pressed lightly against a hard surface that must have been a door, based on the circular knob pressing somewhat uncomfortably into the left side of her lower back. The Doctor broke the kiss, breathing more heavily than he should have needed to with his lung reserves.

"Tell me you'll stay with me," he begged.

Rose knew the Doctor well enough to know that he wasn't asking for forever, necessarily, as nice as the idea was. He was looking for a promise that she'd be there to catch him, just this once, so that he could break apart with her and then rebuild himself stronger. He would never normally let anyone take that weight on themselves for him, and it broke her heart that he clearly needed it in that moment enough to ask.

I'm so sorry, Rose thought silently in advance.

This might just make it all worse over the long term, but for right now they both needed it.

"Yes," she whispered. "You know I will."

The Doctor turned her gently on the spot, letting her body fall away from the door as she twirled so that she was half a foot away when she came face-to-face with it.

"Your choice," he breathed in her ear, taking her hand and placing it on the doorknob. He let his own hand fall away, leaving her to ultimately decide what to do.

She turned the door knob and pushed the door open. Of course she did. She'd been waiting lifetimes for just that decision, though she'd always thought he'd be the one to make it in the end. She supposed he had been, even if she'd been the one to open the door. She'd been waiting for him, after all. Her answer had always been yes, long before the question was posed.

She quickly realised, as she entered with him pressed up close to her back, that this was the Doctor's room. She hadn't really realised he had one. He didn't seem to ever sleep, and his clothes were to be found littering the bathroom more often than not, so she'd figured he didn't need a bedroom. But here it was, with just enough odd gadgets and books and such littered about to illustrate that it belonged to him. It was surreal to finally see it.

"You're sure?" the Doctor asked.

Rose turned and took hold of the Doctor's tie, using it to lead him back to his bed. "What does it look like?" she asked.

The Doctor brushed her hair away from her neck and attached his lips to just above her collarbone. Rose shivered and tilted her head back to allow him more room to explore. She sat back slowly onto the bed, with him following her, his knee coming to rest on the edge of the mattress between Rose's half-spread thighs.

Rose shifted down towards that knee, clamping her legs around it for a moment and arching into it. The Doctor broke the kiss then. His gaze, meeting hers, looked suddenly a little less focused than usual. Rose's own eyes fell closed just for a moment before she made herself go still against him again, determined not to get carried away too soon.

"Well?" she said. "Are you gonna just stand there?"

The Doctor's suit jacket quickly fell to the floor in the long overcoat's wake, and then his hands went to the top of the long stretch of buttons keeping his shirt closed and his body hidden. Rose watched, silently, with great interest as his fingers worked their way downwards. She was suddenly glad that she wasn't wearing a button-up herself today, for she wasn't certain she could take going through this slow sort of torture twice.

When the Doctor undid the buttons at his wrists and then shucked his shirt off, Rose almost told him to stop there for a minute so that she could properly take him in. It had been so rare to see him in _anything_ less than his full uniforms that even seeing him in just his shirtsleeves (or his jumper, back in his previous body) felt sort of forbidden in the same way full nudity did. This, then, was like something of a revelation. Had it not been for the lack of sly comments about alien differences that time that Mickey had changed the unconscious Doctor into sleepwear, she might have even marvelled that the Doctor actually looked like a normal man, all skin and hair and freckles (and really not a lot of muscle definition, actually, but that was all right).

How did he get freckles across his shoulders when they never directly saw the sun, anyway?

Then he was pulling her shirt off as well, and Rose's vision of him was obscured by the fabric. By the time Rose had blinked and refocused on him, he'd tossed her shirt onto the growing pile of clothing and moved his hands to his trousers, and any thoughts Rose might have entertained about asking him to momentarily cease his progress in undressing himself evaporated into nothingness.

Not taking her eyes off him, Rose reached behind herself and undid the clasp of her bra, unable to wait for him to do it.

The Doctor had obviously kicked off his shoes without her noticing, because when his trousers fell to the ground he stepped out of them unimpeded, and then moved forward towards Rose as her bra fell away from her breasts. She flicked it away haphazardly, perhaps to be caught up in the sheets when they undoubtedly become tangled throughout the rest of the night.

"You're beautiful," the Doctor mumbled, a hand coming up to rest hesitantly over her breast, his thumb moving over the outside of the curve until his hand shifted slightly so that it found her nipple. The Doctor looked on with a fascinated expression as the nipple in question reacted, contracting in on itself as it hardened.

"I'd be more beautiful without pants," Rose breathed. The Doctor just kept staring, rapt. "Without pants _now_," she added more insistently, louder, and the Doctor promptly snapped back to attention and went about making that happen.

She lifted her hips so he could pull her trousers and underwear off in one surprisingly deft move. He paused for a moment, then shoved his own underwear down and off before pushing her back further on the bed.

"Tell me 'no' now if –"

"Shut up," Rose said.

"Right," the Doctor agreed. "Good idea."

Of course, he didn't stay quiet for long, with her hand grasping his erection firmly and sliding upwards towards the tip before descending again. In fact, Rose was unsurprised to find that he was extremely vocal.

She'd imagined him that way. Nothing could stop the Doctor from babbling, as far as she was aware.

She'd imagined a lot of other things about being with him, and though she'd always tried to keep her fantasies realistic, she'd had centuries to build on them. Of course they'd managed to be blown slightly out of proportion. So of course the reality couldn't quite measure up.

But as he slid inside her gently, slowly rocking himself in so as not to go too fast for her (it had been a very long time, after all), Rose thought that even though this wasn't going to last as long as either of them might hope, and it probably wasn't going to be as mind-blowing as she'd sometimes dreamed, it was still _good_.

It was him. It was her. So it was wonderful, even while it was amazingly awkward in a way. Rose pulled the Doctor back into a kiss as if to convey that to him before her mouth fell away from his in a long gasp.

They were quiet for a while after, with Rose's quick breaths being the loudest noise in the room. The Doctor seemed fine at first, simply rolling off her body slightly to make them both more comfortable. After a little while, though, he started shaking, just barely noticeably, as if with suppressed sobs.

"Rose," the Doctor began, his voice cracking.

Her arms were around him in a moment, pulling his head comfortingly against her chest over the beating of her single human heart.

"I know," she said simply.

If Donna could be strong for him, so could she.

A long time later, when his silent shaking stopped without ever quite devolving into real outright crying, Rose kissed the Doctor on the forehead and uncurled her hands from his hair.

"We could skip forward if you like," Rose suggested, letting him pull away enough to look up at her face. "In a few months Donna can come back on board the TARDIS, you know. We could skip ahead through visiting her so that we could get to _that_ in barely a day. What else is a time ship for?"

The Doctor made a disbelieving sound. "Not everyone is willing to drop everything and cross universes to travel with me, Rose. You're special."

She knew that, but it was nice to hear him say it.

"But this is Donna we're talking about," Rose insisted.

"Everyone always finds a life beyond me," the Doctor said. "Donna's figured out by now how resourceful she can be. Do you think she'll just hang around doing nothing for months on end, waiting for her life to restart? She's bound to pick up new ties on Earth, and probably some fantastic job that she enjoys, and then it's 'just a quick trip as long as you get me back in time for work', and then it's 'I'm too busy this month, try me next time', and then we end up seeing each other so rarely that we probably won't even connect the same way anymore. And one day she'll be old, and I'll have to watch her die, if she even makes it that far. That's how it works. That's why I don't go back."

"But you're going back for her," Rose said. She wasn't sure whether she meant it as a question. She hoped the indisputability of those words went without saying, but she could never be sure with the Doctor. "You promised," she reminded him, trying to press home just _why_ it shouldn't be questionable.

"I know," the Doctor said. "I promised because she wants me to, and you want me to. It's not better for me, though. I mean, short-term, yeah. Of course I want to see her as often as possible. But I'll have to watch her drift away from me, and get older, and have a life in what might as well be the space of a blink."

Rose frowned. "You know, I told Jack something that first time we went to Cardiff to see him. I didn't realise you might need to hear the same. I'm sorry for that."

"What?"

"I told him don't give up on people, no matter how much loss you go through. You know what happens when you let that go on even better than I do," Rose noted.

"I haven't given up on people. I've got you."

Rose cringed slightly, guiltily. "You need more ties to Earth than me, though. I don't even live there anymore. The TARDIS is home, but it's not a family. You need both. And your family's on Earth, whether you like it or not."

The Doctor was quiet for a while, before he agreed, "Yeah. Rose Tyler, where would I be without you?"

She would have given anything to hear him say things like that when she'd been twenty years old and believed in her own immortality. Now that she'd achieved a measure of immortality after all, she just wished he'd stop. 

* * *

Rose jerked awake at the caress of a reassuring hand down her back, her heart racing.

"You were having a nightmare," the Doctor said.

Rose hoped to whatever deity might answer the call that she hadn't spoken in her sleep. She appreciated that he'd clearly stayed the whole night with her, but the last thing she needed was for him to listen in on her dreams.

Stupid, she cursed herself silently. She should have thought about that before she'd fallen asleep with him.

Their limbs were still tangled together even though the Doctor had clearly had to rearrange them to be able to pull the blankets over them during the night. Rose shifted, then, stretching her suddenly stiff-feeling muscles. The two of them pried themselves apart and out of bed.

Once they were both dressed and in the console room, Rose was quick to notice the brilliant job the Doctor was doing of pretending he hadn't shown her how needy he could be the night before.

Rose found that she was all right with that. He'd been letting everything build up inside his own head for far too long, and he'd needed to let that out. Rose had known that, and that was why she had forced the issue in the end. But it wouldn't be right if he wasn't that man who showed an impenetrable strength to the world most of the time. She didn't think he could cope on a daily basis if he didn't have that to lean back on.

Still, for a long time that morning he didn't even say a word to her. Rose found herself repeatedly recalling how he'd stayed the night, trying to extrapolate that knowledge into a belief that he really didn't regret sharing all that with her.

He'd said he couldn't go back. She had to believe that.

The distance between them didn't last, thankfully, but when he reached for her it was only to take her hand, as had long since become their custom. Perhaps, then, he might be temporarily ignoring the fact that they'd moved on to something deeper and scarier the night before.

Or perhaps he was just distracted and Rose was reading too much into it. It was hard to tell with the Doctor. Even more so than the average man.

They spent the day mostly quietly, just observing the new planet they'd stepped out onto. Somehow, though the day ended, probably inevitably, with them sprinting away from twenty-feet tall beings that looked like a chicken had bred with a fox (which must have been an awkward coming together, really, Rose couldn't help but think). Rose found that not only was she grinning as she ran, but so was he.

Back in the safety of the TARDIS, the Doctor manoeuvred the ship into the Vortex before turning to Rose. He had a look in his eyes that she rarely saw. It matched some of the looks he'd cast at her the night before.

When the Doctor beckoned her to follow into the hallway, then, Rose breathed a sigh of relief.

No going back. Good.

Whatever else happened, she refused to regret that. 

* * *

"One day," Rose said with a sad little laugh, "you're going to learn to park your TARDIS somewhere where it won't fall into a hole, or be locked away where we can't get to it by suspicious natives, or, I dunno ... _end up at the centre of a sun_."

"It's impossible," the Doctor said. He kept saying that, Rose noted, even though it clearly _wasn't_ impossible. The Doctor had just seen that planet, which had been just rocks and gases when they'd landed on it, burst into self-perpetuating flames as clearly as she had. Obviously it wasn't impossible, because it had _happened_.

"Stars don't get made just like that," the Doctor said. "They just don't."

"Well this one did," Rose said. "And now the TARDIS is stuck somewhere within that burning ball of gas over there, presuming it survived the huge fireball. We're just lucky this ship picked us up, or we'd be down there as well. I doubt we'd have had as much of a chance of survival as the TARDIS does."

"_Lucky_," the Doctor scoffed. "We could have made it back to the TARDIS if we hadn't been scooped up like that, and then we'd have been off somewhere else having a brilliant time. Some rescue."

Rose shook her head indulgently. She knew that the Doctor was well aware that, even though they'd known something was off, they wouldn't have just retreated into the TARDIS in time. They'd been too busy investigating. It was what they did. They'd have been trying to solve a mystery one second, and then burned to cinders the next, with nothing left to show that they'd ever been there in the first place except for an abandoned TARDIS no one would ever find.

No one they knew would have even known what had happened to them. Donna, Jack, any of the others that they saw on a repeated basis; they'd all just have thought the Doctor finally decided against going back for visits. They might still think that now, if the Doctor and Rose couldn't get the TARDIS back and were really stuck in that one time and place permanently. It wouldn't exactly be out of character for the Doctor to just disappear without a goodbye, really. They were all probably half-expecting it to happen one day.

Not today, she swore to herself. They weren't leaving the others behind forever, because they weren't going to be _stuck_ there forever.

Rose reminded herself that, even though she'd complained about the repeat nature of their losing the TARDIS, it _had_ happened before. They'd always managed to get it back. They'd get it back this time, too.

"So we're stranded on this ship, then?" Rose asked. "That sounds familiar. Plans for getting us out of this?"

The Doctor looked at her speculatively. "Well, no. Not yet. But anyway, we might be stuck in this timeframe, possibly. But stranded? No. Never. This isn't like when we were near that black hole. That was barely even into your future. No, we're in the 316th century, by your Earth reckoning. There's enough technology on this ship to get us somewhere where I could modify us a perfect serviceable spaceship. Not as brilliant as the TARDIS, obviously, and not really a home. But we could travel the stars still, you and me."

"No carpets and mortgages?" Rose asked.

The Doctor shuddered. "I really hope not. Although, carpets didn't fade out of existence until the 763rd century, so I might just be that unlucky after all."

Rose was with him completely on that. She'd had enough years living that life that she wasn't going to be ready to settle back down to it any time soon, if ever. They'd have to be extremely unlucky, and terribly desperate, to settle for that now.

"Really, though," the Doctor said, looking back out the shielded window to the newly formed star. "That shouldn't have happened in the first place. I know, clearly it's not impossible, whatever. But that was a planet. It had an atmosphere, and people living on it, and everything. And then suddenly it's a sun. That's wrong. And it's wrong for there to be a star in this place, anyway. There are planets nearby that will quickly overheat from the extra influence on their atmosphere. Those planets really should continue thriving for millions of years, yet. Something made this planet do that, and that something clearly wasn't natural."

"Does that mean that we can reverse it?" Rose asked.

The Doctor made that face that suggested the answer was really a bit too complicated for that to be completely true. "Well, I think we can stop the planet from burning like that. But the planet and everything on it is gone. That can't just be reversed. Fires that hot, there'll be nothing left except whatever the molten rock reforms as."

"Nothing except the TARDIS, right?"

"Exactly. The TARDIS can take greater heat than that. She probably would've had difficulty maintaining the internal atmosphere and shielding us if we were still inside now, so it's probably just as well we aren't in there – not that I'm admitting that the crew of this ship was right to pick us up, mind! If we could have got back to the TARDIS back then, we'd hardly still be inside the sun-planet-not-quite-combo-thingy right now, would we? I'd have taken the TARDIS into the Vortex immediately, and we'd be all safe and everything. But if we _were_ still in there now, somehow, we'd have roasted, with the TARDIS herself being a bit hurt, but overall fine. Until she died because I was gone, that is."

Rose flinched on the ship's behalf. "That happens?"

The Doctor shrugged. "I'm linked to the ship. She'll die when I do, yes. But I'm fine, and she's fine, so it really doesn't matter so much. Especially since we've got better things to do than sitting about worrying about things that aren't even happening. Because if that planet shouldn't be a star, then someone should really _stop_ it from being a star, don't you think?"

"Lucky this lot's picked up just the man for the job, then," Rose said.

"Just the _people_," the Doctor corrected, looping an arm around her waist pointedly. "Come on, Rose Tyler! Time to go save yet another corner of the universe!" 

* * *

They were just walking through a forest of some sort on Castrovalva, which the Doctor claimed actually did have a very intelligent population. Somewhere around here, he'd added, peering around at the trees in confusion. Rose would have to take his word for it. It looked like a primitive planet to her.

Then they'd stumbled across the TARDIS, looking a bit worse for wear, really.

"Did you just lead us in a circle?" Rose asked. "We're never gonna find this civilisation, are we? And what's happened to the TARDIS, anyway? She didn't look like that when you landed her."

The Doctor studied it for a moment and then turned back to Rose. "That's not the TARDIS," he said matter-of-factly.

"Of course it is," Rose laughed. "Police boxes don't just show up in forests half a universe away from Earth unless _you_ leave them there."

"I did," he said. "And it is a TARDIS. _My_ TARDIS, even. But that's my TARDIS from years ago. I'm already here, apparently. A younger me."

Rose looked around her as if the younger Doctor in question might pop out at her at any moment. She'd seen bits of the Doctor's future. Enough to make her wish she hadn't, actually. But she'd never really seen his past. His past seemed somehow less likely to ruin either of their lives, which was a nice thought.

"Oh!" the Doctor suddenly cried. "Castrovalva! I was here straight after regenerating! That one did my head in, I've gotta tell you. No wonder I don't remember being here. Or, well, I do, but it's sort of blurred. I had to think _that_ hard just to recall ever being here. That's a worry, with a brain as big as mine. I've got a good memory, usually."

"So can we go and see this newly-regenerated you? Or is that a paradox, two yous together? And which you is this one, then?"

"My fifth body," the Doctor said absently. "And no, it's not a paradox. Well, not quite. It works a little different with Time Lords and different regenerations than it does with you humans. But it's probably best all around if we don't hang around. It's never a good experience, meeting myself, and it can be dangerous. Especially since I don't remember that happening here and now."

Rose took the Doctor's hand and let him lead her away from the other TARDIS.

The Doctor didn't like to look back. Not even at himself, and certainly not at the old assistants his fifth self probably had travelling with him. Rose knew that, and so she let it slide without comment. 

* * *

They'd taken Donna on her first trip on the TARDIS since her injury. She was finally walking steadily enough on the prosthetic that she (and the Doctor) had been willing to take the chance.

"But if you drop us off somewhere where there's actually some sort of alien coup or something going on, I know exactly who's going to be carrying me when the running starts," she'd warned the Doctor.

Of course, the Doctor wasn't going to be much help if aliens did suddenly attack them, because he'd wandered off in disgust that Donna had chosen a pleasure planet – "Don't you remember what happened on the last one!" he'd cried – for her choice of trip.

So he was off somewhere, and Rose and Donna were getting 89th century manicures. Then Rose would get her hair dyed and cut again, she thought, because it was getting rather ridiculous again.

"So ..." Donna prompted.

"So what?" Rose asked.

"Oh please, what do you think? You and him. You've been all up in each other's space all of the time since I went back to London. Heck, I haven't even been able to send him far enough away from you to ask you about it."

"Like him being there would stop you," Rose cracked.

"Not normally, no," Donna admitted. "And it would be interesting to see what colour his face turned when I brought it up. But I figured I'd leave that for later, and then spring it on him when he does something to annoy me."

"You're terrible," Rose said, laughing.

"But I'm right, aren't I? You two ..."

"Believe it or not, yeah."

"Damn it!" Donna said, and Rose nearly pulled the hand that was currently being massaged out of her masseuse's grip as she turned abruptly to look at her friend.

"I thought you'd be happy about it," Rose said, frowning.

"Don't do that, love," her masseuse said, pointing at her forehead. "You'll get lines on your beautiful young face."

"I really won't," Rose assured him, then turned back to Donna. "You've been pushing us to get together forever."

Donna rolled her eyes at Rose. "Yeah, well, I didn't think he'd ever pull it together, did I? I made a bet with Jack, and apparently I've lost."

Rose laughed. "Serves you right. Jack's notoriously good at winning bets. If you want to win, make one with the Doctor."

"Oh, but the Doctor never pays up when he loses," Donna said.

Rose smiled. No, she thought, he really didn't.

"So ..." Donna said. "Was he good? I can't imagine he was any good. He's so skinny."

"Donna!" Rose exclaimed, chuckling. "I'm not telling you that! You'll use it against him!"

"Aha!" Donna said. "So he _was_ bad, if it's something I can use against him. Poor bloke. It's probably been just about forever for him. Out of practice, d'you think?"

"What? No! Oh, whatever. He's good, all right. That's all you're getting. And don't you dare try to tell him I said otherwise. Nothing is sacred with you, is it?"

Donna smirked. "I've been stuck with nothing other than dull 21st century celebrities to fill my gossip quota. I need my fix of alien drama, all right?"

Rose rolled her eyes, but found she was still smiling. 

* * *

The Doctor stepped out of the TARDIS and looked around. "Ah!" he said. "51st century Pylarus!"

"51st century?" Rose asked. "That seems to be your home away from home away from home."

If the Doctor detected the slightly bitter tone in Rose's voice, he ignored it. "I do seem to be spending a bit of time here recently," the Doctor agreed. "And it's Jack's time, of course."

"Yeah," Rose said. "Jack."

That really hadn't been who she'd been thinking about when it came to people native to this century, _actually_.

"So what brings us here, then?" she asked, almost afraid of the answer. Surely he wasn't intending to introduce her to River and make them play nice together.

"Don't know," the Doctor said. "I set the controls to random and here we are. I thought she might take us somewhere a little less familiar, actually."

Well, it was something that he hadn't come here on purpose, Rose supposed. And if they were just here by accident, there was no saying they would run into River. It was a big universe, after all.

"Sweetie!"

Apparently not that big.

The Doctor's eyes went wide and he shut the door abruptly, inclining back against it as if that would help to keep it shut, if necessary. Rose leaned back against the railing as casually as she could manage, crossing her arms over her chest, waiting to see how he intended to deal with this development.

"Er ..." he started. "Look, Rose, it's not ... it's dangerous out there. You shouldn't go out."

"Dangerous," Rose parroted. "Where have we ever travelled that it's not dangerous?"

The Doctor run a hand through his already-messy hair in frustration. "Not that kind of dangerous, actually. There's ... there's someone out there, now, and that person is from my future. And I don't think it would be a good idea, from a preserving-the-linear-balance perspective, for you two to be in the same place at the same time."

"You mean you're worried she'll tell me all about your future with her," Rose corrected.

"Who said 'she'? Did I say 'she'?"

"No," Rose said, looking him dead-on. "But I'm not an idiot. For one thing, I may be several centuries old now, but my hearing isn't so bad that I didn't catch that greeting. For another, I know exactly who she is. River Song, right?"

The Doctor's eyes narrowed. "Has Donna been telling you stories?"

Rose rolled her eyes. "I _can_ figure things out on my own, thanks. And is this what you plan to do every time we run into her? Bundle me off in the TARDIS, or leave me in London with Donna or in Cardiff with Jack so you can run off to meet her?"

"Rose ..."

"No point hiding in there, sweetie," a voice from outside said, followed by three smart knocks on the door. "I have a key."

"Not now, River!" the Doctor snapped at the door.

"Ooh, aren't you feisty today?"

Rose turned away. "Look, whatever," she said bitterly. "You go off and find out why the TARDIS brought us here. Clearly there's a reason, beyond wanting to annoy the life out of me. I'll just stay here like a good obedient little companion, shall I?"

"Rose," the Doctor pleaded again.

Rose shook her head at him and retreated into the hallway. She heard the squeak of the TARDIS door opening, followed by voices for a moment, and then the door shut and the TARDIS was nearly silent.

Rose leaned against the wall and ran a hand over her face tiredly.

They couldn't keep doing this. 

* * *

"No _way_," Rose breathed. "Talking giraffes? Talking _blue_ giraffes? Those giraffes are blue, and they talk."

"Yes," the Doctor laughed at her. "Except they're not called giraffes. That, I'll have you know, is a rhinoceros."

"It is not!" Rose said, looking back at the large blue animals. "Now I know you're making it up."

"I'm not!" the Doctor protested. "It's biology and speech following similar patterns across different parts of the universe. It happens a lot. It just so happens that in this place, the words got applied to slightly different things. Not so unusual."

"And the giraffes – sorry, rhinos – are blue as well."

"Yep!" the Doctor said.

"And they talk? Intelligently?"

"You're very hung up on that," the Doctor noted. "You've met loads of different types of aliens, even ones that are descended from things you know from Earth. Like the trees. Remember the talking trees?"

Rose did, vaguely, but that didn't change the inherent oddness of this.

"It's just weird because they look so much like Earth giraffes. The talking trees just looked like humanoid people, except wooden, if I remember right. It's different. I can't believe they talk."

"Well," the Doctor said, "shall we go have a chat? Just to make sure I'm not making it all up."

Rose grinned. "What do talking giraffe-rhinoceros-things talk about?"

"Let's find out!"

They only walked part of the way down the slope towards the grazing blue creatures, however, before a vibration and a noise, both coming from Rose's pocket, stopped them. A rhinoceros shifted nervously in front of her at the unexpected sound. The others all quickly took on a similar wary look. Rose wondered whether they'd try to charge like Earth rhinos, or whether they really were more like giraffes in actions as well as looks, talking aside.

Rose pulled her ringing phone from her pocket and flipped it open, noting the caller ID before answering, "Jack?"

"Every child in the UK stopped dead still and started chanting, 'We Are Coming'. Caught your interest yet?"

"Yeah," Rose said, a smile forming. "Need some help?"

"How soon can you get here?"


	5. Chapter Five

Author's Notes: This chapter takes some ideas as well as dialogue (both directly lifted and paraphrased) from the episodes The End of Time Parts One and Two. Credit goes to Russell T Davies, the writer of those episodes, for these snippets. 

* * *

Chapter Five

They'd just left Donna's house after dropping her back there after a long day of shopping. It had been just the London kind, not the kind located on often unexpectedly deadly alien shopping planets, though Rose had been very suspicious of that woman in the jewellery place being not quite human; no human women could talk that much without pausing for breath, surely. After dropping Donna back, Rose and the Doctor had stopped in quickly up the road for milk.

"Is that all you two ever want to do?" the Doctor was griping as he scooped what seemed like half the banana supply of the whole supermarket into his arms. "Shop?"

"We could have got a trolley if you wanted that much food," Rose said. "Especially since you've been going on about how sore your arms are after carrying all of our bags. Don't you want a break?"

The Doctor glared. "I don't _do_ trolleys. Do you know what trolleys tell the whole world about us? Trolleys suggest we're here for the weekly shop, like some sort of married Earth couple with two dogs and a house. With a _mortgage_. You know how I feel about mortgages, Rose."

"We _are_ here for the weekly shop, actually. The girl on Checkout Number Three knows us both by name, we're in here so often," Rose said. Her protest fell on purposely deaf ears.

Rose sighed and looked away absently across the store. Then she found herself squinting, trying to focus. Surely, this wasn't ... but no, it was different to that. There wasn't blurred vision or anything. It was just like there was something there that she couldn't quite see. Right ... there ...

"Um," Rose said suddenly, as the thing she was staring at seeming to snap into focus. "Is it just me or is that an Ood? In the middle of the supermarket? In London in 2009? An _Ood_."

The Doctor fumbled the bananas in shock and dropped half of them as he turned to look. That wouldn't have happened if they'd had a trolley, Rose couldn't help but think off-handedly.

"So?" she asked for confirmation. "Ood? Supermarket?"

Flabbergasted. That was how Rose would describe the way the Doctor looked at that moment.

"Pretty much, yeah," he murmured. "That's odd."

Rose shook her head. "Yeah, well, odd Ood aren't new to us, are they? And you don't half attract weirdness."

"Oi!" the Doctor said, his attention snapped away from the lone Ood half-blocking the entrance of Aisle Six. "I didn't tell it to show up there. Did you hear me, in the TARDIS, get on the phone with the Oodsphere and order up one Ood to go? Or tell this one in particular that supermarket displays were really just as homey a location to hang about in as the snow?"

"No," Rose admitted. "But you're here, and it's here, and if you even try to tell me that's a coincidence, all you'll get from me is the biggest eye roll in history. Now go see what it wants, before that lady over there sees it and starts screaming or something."

"I don't think she can," the Doctor said. "See it, I mean. I think it's just here for me."

"Oh," Rose said. "Well that might explain it. Because at first it was like I couldn't quite see it, but I sort of knew _something_ was there. But you saw it first go, no problems. But then how did I see it at all, if it's meant just for you?"

"You're a time traveller," the Doctor said. "You see the world differently to these other people."

Well, Rose didn't really need the Doctor to tell her that, actually. She knew she saw things differently.

"So it's just an illusion, is it?" she asked. "Because I don't know whether these other people can see it, but someone would have run into it by now if it was actually there."

"It's a psychic projection, more like," the Doctor. "A psychic projection through _time_. That really shouldn't be possible. The Ood shouldn't have advanced that quickly. Unless it's been significantly longer for them than I'm imagining, I suppose, but even then. That is ... impressive."

"Well, go ask the Ood about it, already," Rose pushed. "We're not exactly going to find answers standing about in the fruit section."

The Doctor set down the remaining bananas he was holding and walked over to the Ood.

"Hello there," he greeted, as if meeting an old friend as planned rather than stumbling across an Ood in the completely wrong millennium and section of the universe.

If any of the customers in the supermarket noticed the Doctor talking to what looked to them to be empty space (or else possibly a box of cereal), they obviously just wrote him off as a crazy person and ignored him. The staff, on the other hand, was nowhere to be seen in the vicinity anyway. This particular Tesco had had to deal with the Doctor's quirks often enough that the staff seemed to know to flee the area the moment they caught sight of him. Rose couldn't help but think that those sorts of reactions were probably the best responses the average person could have to the Doctor, really. He did tend to be a bit of a menace, and wasn't really meant for the faint of heart.

"We have searched for you in vain for so long," the Ood said, its translator ball lighting up.

"Well," the Doctor said, "I can be a bit hard to pin down. I get around."

"You will come, now. It is nearly too late already."

Then the Ood faded out of existence right in front of them.

"That was cryptic," Rose commented.

"Just enough to grab our attention," the Doctor agreed. "I get the feeling that was the point. They want us intrigued enough to come looking for answers. Let's not disappoint them. Fancy a trip to the Oodsphere?"

"You think I'm going to miss finding out how an Ood gets into a Tesco in the past? No chance. Let's go."

The Doctor nodded resolutely. Then he headed off in the exact opposite direction to where the exit was.

"Doctor? It's the other way."

"I know that," he said. "But we were in here in the first place because we're out of milk. There's always time to pick up milk. Tea makes everything better. Tell you what, you go grab the milk, and I'll get the bananas. Bananas are good too."

Rose rolled her eyes and walked away towards the cold section. How could he claim he wasn't domestic when here he was putting off strange alien riddles for the sake of tea.

Then again, tea _had_ helped the Doctor save the day before.

Rose grabbed two bottles of milk, just to be safe. She didn't fancy dying just because they'd run out. 

* * *

"Why did the TARDIS drop us here?" Rose asked. "And where's _here_, for that matter? It sounds like we're near the docks. That makes this pretty much no man's land, as far as I'm aware."

"The TARDIS was tracking the Master," the Doctor said. "So the Master must be nearby." He inhaled deeply. "He's not far off, anyway. I can smell him."

"Smell him," Rose repeated, nonplussed. "Right. Honestly, Time Lords. And you think humans are odd." She chuckled to herself. "So who's 'the Master' when he's at home?" Rose asked, nearly stumbling as the loose gravel shifted under her feet, grasping the Doctor's forearm for support before dropping it again, keen to find her own balance.

"You saw him," the Doctor said, looking around the wasteland. "When I showed the Ood, you were connected as well. You saw what he did."

"Yeah, but that's really not what I meant," Rose said. "Who's he to _you_?"

"He's a Time Lord. Was. Is. I don't even know anymore. He shouldn't be alive."

"But it's more than that," Rose protested. "I've hardly ever seen you cry, but you cried for him."

The Doctor stopped looking around long enough to meet Rose's eyes. "He's ... a part of me, I suppose. We were friends once. We've been enemies since. But we're always in and out of each other's lives."

"You love him," Rose said. It wasn't a question.

The Doctor shrugged. "I hate him as well. And I pity him, and I even envy him a little sometimes. It's been all been mixed up together for so long that it can't be separated out any more."

"But you're hoping he's alive, aren't you?" Rose said.

The Doctor was quiet.

"It's all right if you are," Rose said. "I know how you feel about your people being gone. But then there's him. He's like family to you, I think, whatever else he is. Family drives you nuts, but you still would rather they be around than gone."

The Doctor looked at her again. "You miss them, don't you? Your family," he asked.

"Always," Rose said.

The Doctor looked like he might say something further, but he was interrupted by the sound of banging echoing around them.

"What's that?" Rose asked.

"Shh!" the Doctor said, looking around, trying to get a fix on where the noise was originating as it continued. "This way!" he said, taking off at a run. Rose followed, scattering loose rocks in every which direction as she ran awkwardly through the gravel. The ground evened out and the Doctor darted even faster in and out of piles of metal out in front of her. Rose just did her best to try to keep up.

When the Doctor stopped suddenly, staring at the figure of a man off in the distance, Rose practically barrelled into him. She grabbed his coat to steady herself and was just in time to catch sight of the other man leaping fifty feet or so into the air.

"Holy crap," she panted. She was left standing still in astonishment as the Doctor took off again. Was that a Time Lord trick? If so, the Doctor had certainly never let on.

Rose caught up to the Doctor again as he was leaning over a railing, scanning the distance.

"Lost him," he told her.

"That was him?" Rose asked. "The Master?"

"Yes. Oh, but he's gone so wrong. He shouldn't have been able to do that. The jumping thing, I mean. He's burning up his own life energy. He's dying, Rose."

"I'm sorry," Rose said.

"Thank you, but save your sorries until we know what he has planned in the mean time. He's desperate, and more powerful than usual. The Master's unbalanced enough normally, but like that ... You might find that you don't really want him to survive after all."

"You still do," Rose said. "You want to help him. That's enough for me."

The Doctor looked to her and nodded gratefully. "Come on. The TARDIS is pretty familiar with his signature. We might be able to home in on him again if we hurry up."

They headed back to where they'd left the TARDIS near the debris of a ruined building and the Doctor ran around the console setting it. When they stepped out again, however, they were back in the rubble near the docks, only now it was night.

"What, did he just circle around back to here or something?" Rose asked.

"We need to be quiet," the Doctor whispered. "Sound carries, and we don't want to warn him we're coming or he'll run off again."

Rose fell quiet and followed along behind him. She saw the hunched figure at about the same time the Doctor did, and they both paused.

The man suddenly straightened, sensing them, and turned around. His eyes slid over the Doctor to rest on Rose.

"Oh," he called. "Look at this. Whatever happened to poor Martha Jones, then, Doctor? She would have died for you, and now you've just replaced her."

"It's me you want to fight with," the Doctor said. "Leave her out of it."

If anything, the Doctor's defensive tone just shifted the Master's attention further onto Rose, like he was determined to counter the Doctor. Rose stood her ground as the Master walked towards them.

"Of course, this one looks more interesting than poor heart-broken Ms Jones, so I don't blame you. What is that?" he asked. "That energy. It's certainly not human."

"Shut up," Rose warned.

"She has spirit as well," the Master said, grinning. "I can break you of that, little girl."

"It'd take more than you to break me," Rose said, well aware as soon as the words left her mouth that it sounded like she'd just issued a challenge. The Master just smirked, looking cocky.

"Rose ..." the Doctor warned, and then looked like he wanted to kick himself.

"Rose, is it?" the Master laughed. "Well! That would make you Rose Tyler, then, I'd say. I ripped apart his TARDIS and it screamed your name as well as his. You were connected to it."

"Leave her alone," the Doctor said.

"Do you hear it?" the Master asked her. "You've looked into the Time Vortex. You've seen it. The never-ending drums are so loud. You must hear them."

"What? There's no drums," Rose said in confusion.

"But it's there! Every beat of my hearts, there it is! Don't tell me you can't hear that! You had all of time and space in your head, and you can't possibly tell me the drums weren't right there with them, you liar!"

He rushed towards her angrily, but the Doctor stepped in the way, catching the Master around the chest and flinging them both to the ground.

They both half-sprawled on the ground, tense, and stared at each other. Squaring off, Rose thought. Circling each other like animals.

"Look at us now, eh," the Master said. "Me a homeless wreck _stuck_ on a useless planet, and you too busy lusting after some girl who's barely evolved past a single-celled organism to use the power and influence you still have."

"We could be more," the Doctor offered. "Together. I need your help."

"Oh, that's rich!" the Master said.

"There's something bigger than you or I coming. The end of time itself, I've been told."

"The drums in my head get stronger and stronger by the second. One-two-three-four, one-two-three-four. Of _course_ something is coming, you idiot. That girl of yours might have looked at Time, but she's still human, so maybe her brain is too small to pick it up. But you ... It's so loud now. You can't possibly have missed it. Tell me you hear it!"

"Like Rose said, there's nothing. I'm sorry."

"You're not listening," the Master said. "It's calling to me. It's there. Listen, listen. There."

Rose started forward as the Master leaned toward the Doctor and pressed their foreheads together. "_Listen_!" the Master hissed.

The Doctor recoiled, looking terrified, and Rose went to his side, tensed and ready to defend him if necessary.

"What _is_ that?" the Doctor asked. "I heard it. Inside your head. What's in there?"

The Master laughed hysterically. "It's real," he said, sounding ecstatic. "_It's real_!"

Then energy shot out of his hands and propelled him into the air, just like Rose had seen happen earlier.

The Doctor climbed to his feet.

"You all right?" she asked quickly.

"Fine," he said. He followed the Master a few steps and stopped as the Master did.

"All these years you thought I was mad!" the Master called. "But it's calling me. What is it? What is it?"

And then suddenly the wasteland, seemingly empty except for the three of them, erupted into light and movement. The Master was dragged into a helicopter and soldiers attacked the Doctor.

"No!" Rose cried, running at them in an effort to stop them, but they whacked the Doctor into unconsciousness and turned on her. She stopped and held up her hands in entreaty, backing away slightly. "All right, sorry. You don't have to hit me or anything. I'll stay here."

She'd expected that they would ignore her and knock her out as well, but instead they all just disappeared nearly as quickly as they'd come upon them, their dark outfits melting seamlessly into the black of the night.

Rose was left in the dark with the Doctor, who was thoroughly unconscious.

"Doctor!" she cried, shaking his shoulder. "Oh, come on. Wake up. Damn it."

He was out cold, good and proper. Rose sat down, jagged rocks jutting into her, and waited, occasionally checking him to see whether he was waking up and to make sure he hadn't stopped breathing or anything.

When he woke up hours later, he groaned and lifted his head off the ground. "My head," he muttered.

"Dirt's a good look for you," Rose said casually.

The Doctor squinted at her against the light of the early morning. "Where ... the Master?"

"Taken. You've been out cold all night."

The Doctor looked around. "And you waited out here with me?"

Rose shrugged. "I didn't have anywhere better to be just then," she said.

The Doctor shook his head at her and then winced from the pain.

"Come on," Rose said.

"Where to?" the Doctor asked darkly. "I have no idea where they'd have taken him."

Rose smiled. "We're looking for suspicious, probably alien activity in the heart of London, right? Well gee, wouldn't it be nice if we had a friend who lived here who enjoyed lurking around, checking those sorts of things out?" 

* * *

"Is it Christmas?" the Doctor asked, looking around at the decorations.

Donna rolled her eyes. "Oh, you never change, do you? It's Christmas morning, you plum."

"Oh," he said, sounding sort of stunned. "Merry Christmas, then."

"Yeah, yeah, later," Donna waved him off. "Clearly you're not just stopping by, or you'd have had some idea what day it was. Probably. Maybe not, actually, knowing you."

"No," Rose chimed in. "Not just stopping by this time, sorry. We're on a bit of a mission. Something weird's going on. Alien. Something big enough that they need a Time Lord for it. We were hoping you'd have some idea what it was."

"Something strange?" Donna asked. "_Oh_, yeah. You'd be surprised how many doors are opened for you when you're leaning on a cane."

Rose grinned. "Donna Noble, are you milking your injury?"

Donna replied, "Got to save the planet from aliens somehow. Psychic paper," she nodded at the Doctor, "knowing the right people, a bit of flirting, and something to make them think I'm helpless. Works every time."

Sly woman. Rose was glad to see Donna joking about the leg, really. It'd been nearly eight months for her, but still. It wasn't the sort of thing you just got over, she imagined. Donna was always so strong, and it showed.

It probably helped that she didn't even need the cane anymore, as well, and hadn't for a while. It was easier to joke about something like that when it stopped being so completely debilitating.

"So what's going on?" the Doctor pressed.

"Hang on," Donna said, rifling through her things. "Ha!" she said, brandishing a book with an arrogant looking guy on the front of it. "That Sarah Jane Smith you put me onto let me know that there was something weird about this one. She's off busy with something else, of course, but I was happy to pick up the slack."

"Sarah Jane?" the Doctor asked, looking at Rose.

Rose shrugged, and tried to hide her smirk.

"This bloke," Donna continued, ignoring them. "He's got some big mansion and there's all sorts of weird energy flowing through something inside. UNIT's all over looking into it, now that they've finally taken notice of my warnings. They've been pretty useless, though. Of course. Naismith's too powerful for them to touch without a heck of a lot of proof, and they can't find their backsides with their hands half the time."

"Have you been looking into UNIT's classified system?" the Doctor asked, sounding perturbed.

Donna looked at him like he was an idiot. "'Course I have. Rose told me the password."

The Doctor raised an eyebrow at Rose and she shrugged again.

"It's the same as UNIT's password in the parallel universe," she admitted. "UNIT never really changes, even across hundreds of years and different realities."

"But Donna," the Doctor said, clearly trying to sound reasonable but hitting on mildly annoyed instead, "now you've got access to all sorts of information, defence methods, and everything that the UNIT personnel have. You've made yourself a target, but unlike those inside UNIT, you've got no one to back you up. That's dangerous."

"Well, I'm not exactly going to be much use tracking down aliens if I don't even know what little UNIT know, am I?" Donna said. "Besides, UNIT's well aware of me. That van outside? That's UNIT. They're watching me. They think they're being all secretive and that I don't know they're there. Idiots. Gotta say, though, I'm not sure if they think I'm a threat or want to figure out whether it's safe to offer me a job, at this stage. Either way, they'll know if something happens to me. I've got back-up, whether I want it or not."

Rose said, "And you've got us, obviously. Never mind him. He acts annoyed, but it's actually because he didn't think of looking into UNIT's system first. _I_ had to suggest coming to you. He was useless."

"Of course he was," Donna agreed readily. "So anyway, I talked to Jack and he looked into it and said this Naismith got his hands on some old things from Torchwood London after it shut down. I've set UNIT onto it. I had to throw the Doctor's name around pretty heavily with UNIT, mind, before they paid me any attention. _Finally_ – ages after I suggested it, I might add – they called up Martha to make sure I wasn't lying about having travelled with himself. As if they thought some woman couldn't deduce this stuff all on her own, without the 'legendary' Doctor having had a hand in it. They're not half-thick, UNIT. I could've saved them so much effort, but would they just listen the first time?"

"Never," Rose agreed.

"Anyway, I got them to put surveillance on the Naismith place, at least. Eventually. So it just goes to show, you can wear them down with some persistence."

"And no one does persistence like you," Rose said with a grin.

"Torchwood, Sarah Jane, UNIT. Donna Noble," the Doctor said, legitimately sounding impressed this time, "you're very well-connected. And with all that initiative of your own on top ... blimey. The aliens don't stand a chance."

"Super-investigator!" Donna agreed, not looking at all humble. Rose's grin intensified.

"So!" the Doctor said. "Joshua Naismith. Sounds that we're missing a party, Rose."

"You two be careful, though!" Donna said. "The sorts of things Naismith's dealing in ... Well. Whatever is going on in there, it really can't be good. Even worse than your usual, Doctor."

"Yeah. I think it just might be," the Doctor said. "Especially since they seem to want the Master for something."

"The who now?" Donna asked.

"So there _is_ something out there you don't already know after all," the Doctor laughed.

"We'll explain later, won't we, Doctor?" Rose promised. "When the world's done ending."

"You'd just better," Donna said.

They took off and used the TARDIS computer to track down the location of Naismith's mansion, and then headed straight for it.

"Rose," the Doctor started. "Like Donna said, whatever's waiting out there is not going to be good. It's dangerous."

Rose glowered. "If you try to tell me to stay in the TARDIS, I'll lock _you_ in here and go save the world on my own, thanks. How would you like that?"

"You couldn't lock me in. It's _my_ TARDIS."

"Yeah, but she likes me better," Rose gloated.

The Doctor scowled, but didn't correct her. "Fine. All right. But look, try not to tell anyone anything, especially the Master. If I'm right – and I often am –" Rose snorted, but the Doctor continued heedlessly, "these people are dealing with things that they can't possibly understand. The more they know about you, or us, the worse it could be."

"I'm not stupid," Rose said.

"I never suggested you were," he returned.

Rose scoffed. "I can think of a time or two you have, actually."

"Never really meant it, though," the Doctor assured her.

He pulled her into an unexpected kiss. It was way too short for her liking, but she appreciated the sentiment anyway.

"You," he said as he pulled away, "are not even slightly idiotic. You're brilliant. Always."

"I am, aren't I?" Rose said, grinning. The Doctor grinned back at her and then grabbed her hand and led her out of the TARDIS. 

* * *

Rose knew that the Doctor had wanted his race, and more specifically the Master, to survive, but this was all a bit ridiculous. One of the Master was more than enough, really. Now the whole human race had become the exact same madman Time Lord bent on destruction. Except her, obviously, and that was only because of some radiation thing that she hadn't quite understood. She figured, it worked, so why question it?

God, she realised suddenly, even Donna and Sylvia and Wilf must have changed, and Jack and his team over in Cardiff. She thought of this man, wearing Donna's clothes and standing in her house as if he belonged there.

All of the rest of it aside, that was just strange. And really quite terrible. She wondered for an odd moment whether that version of the Master would be missing a leg as well.

God, she wasn't half morbid sometimes.

"How does it feel?" the Master asked her.

"How does what feel?" she asked.

"Being the last of your species."

"You would know."

The Master shook his head. "The Doctor has been the last of the Time Lords. Not me, though. I've always at the very least been one of two, even if neither of us wanted to admit it sometimes. But for you, well, there's really no more humans _anywhere_. At all. They're all me, now."

"Are they all as annoying as you, then?"

The Master laughed. "You're still trying to act tough, aren't you? It won't do you any good."

"What've you done with the Doctor?" Rose asked.

"He's tied to a nice comfortable chair, just like you. He, however, has come down with a case of mild unconsciousness. But I wouldn't worry about him. Even when he wakes up he'll probably still be kept alive. I usually don't try to kill him unless he's particularly annoying me, and since I've gagged him, that's unlikely to happen. It's the prattling, you see. It tends to get on my nerves."

"You want to be the only one who babbles on with rubbish?" Rose asked sympathetically. "Don't worry, I think you're definitely a special little snowflake."

The Master had been all smiles and manic laughter up until then. While that had been somewhat disquieting in its own way, it hadn't conveyed quite how dangerous he was capable of being.

Rose took in the sudden cold look in his eyes at that moment and didn't at all doubt that he would kill her without a thought, if and when it suited him.

"I think I might keep the Doctor alive for now," the Master admitted. "I've got something better in mind. I think killing you would probably hurt him enough that he'd want to die, don't you? Why kill him when I can _hurt_ him? Because you aren't like all those other little Earth girls that flit in and out of his life. You're _special_," he said sarcastically.

"No," Rose said. "I'm just a passenger. He barely even looks at me. You're delusional."

"Oh, no," the Master said. "That's not going to work. I saw inside his head last night. He _loves_ you. Or he thinks he does, anyway. I think he's too sanctimonious to love anyone but himself, personally. But you're all over him. Literally," the Master added with a little shudder, "if his memories were any indication. I can understand taking human girls for a bit of a test drive, sure. I had a wife even, until recently. But he's all ... _intimate_ with you. It's disgusting."

"You're wrong," Rose insisted. "Kill me and he'd just move on. He's probably got another girl in mind already. Like you said, just test driving."

"I don't think so," the Master said. "Not when you're the one that might actually be able to _stay_ with him. He doesn't even know the truth about that, does he? He can't see it around you. I'm made of energy, so of course I can see energy differently to him, but his senses must have dulled over time if he can't see something as obvious as _that_."

"There's nothing to see," Rose said. "It's all in your mind. Haven't you figured out by now that you're completely mad?"

"Stop playing silly little games, girl. I can _see_ it. Those humans who set up that machine, they wanted to live longer. They worked so hard at it, and even then they couldn't possibly achieve what's been done to you by accident. Let alone what you were capable of doing at your height. I've met your Captain Jack, you know. Very neat trick you bestowed on him. I killed him so many times that I actually got bored of it, and I have quite the imagination. Can you imagine?"

Rose gritted her teeth angrily and struggled against her bonds.

"Ooh, she doesn't like that!" the Master crowed. "Stringing all the boys along, are you? Well, Jack didn't strike me as a one-lady man, so I don't imagine he'd mind. Not so sure about the Doctor."

"What would you know?" Rose scoffed.

"Of course, what's really interesting is that these men of yours – these men with all their _principles_ – seem quite willing to forgive you every crime, no matter how extreme."

Rose's eyes widened just slightly enough to be perceptible to the Master before she could stop her reaction.

"Oh, yes. I saw that in the Doctor's head, too. You wiped out the whole Dalek race. _Twice_, even. You violent little human. I think I like you for that."

"Shut up," Rose said quietly.

"How did that feel? To hold their lives in your hands and just snuff it all out? To hear their dying screams and know that you did that? It's glorious, isn't it? You and the Doctor really are quite the match."

"Shut up!" Rose cried out.

The Master smirked callously. "I'm going to have _fun_ playing with you," the Master said. "For now, though, you just sit tight. I've got a planet to run."

He disappeared out of the room, and Rose was left struggling against the straps that bound her to the chair, not particularly hopeful of managing to free herself. She'd had a lot of practice escaping captures over the years, but it didn't seem that talent would help her much now.

Rose couldn't quite believe it, but she just might be going to die today purely because the Master was well-versed in bondage. Damn homicidal Time Lord. 

* * *

The Master stormed back into the room with a knife, and for a moment Rose thought he'd lost interest in drawing out her fate and instead decided to kill her, just like that. Then he slashed through all the straps holding her down to the chair in mere seconds. He grabbed her by the hair.

"Hey!" she protested as he dragged her painfully through the hall back into the main room.

"I thought you should see this," he said. "The Time Lords and Gallifrey are returning. You know that little talk we were having? Well, it turns out I'm not one of two. I'm one of many. I don't need the Doctor anymore. So we're going to blast him out of the sky, and you're going to watch it happen."

The sky? What was the Doctor doing up there? Judging by the last Rose had heard of it, he should have been tied up about where she was standing now, probably with the exact same guns pointed at him as were now aimed at her to keep her in place.

And what on Earth had the Master meant by the Time Lords returning? They were dead. The Doctor had been so sure. But then, he'd been sure he was completely alone, and the Master was clearly proof that that wasn't the case. So what did the Doctor know, really?

She watched, flinching with each one, as missile after missile was launched at a spaceship, their progress visually tracked and fed back to them on the screen. The Doctor was on that ship, she thought, panicked. Somehow, though, the ship overcame each and every missile aimed its way.

Rose thought she knew why the Doctor used the word 'impossible' so often; it was because he was so completely impossible himself.

Only a minute or so later, against the backdrop of a bright light erupting from the middle of the room and figures emerging, the Doctor proved just how impossible he was by falling through the roof from some great height and impacting the ground heavily without dying, or even regenerating. Though he did seem quite injured, Rose noticed.

Most of what was actually going on sort of went over Rose's head. History of the Time Lords, stars that weren't stars, an abundance of other odd references; she felt like she'd missed out on some significant back-story, there. But then, she was also feeling a little slow on the uptake due to being kind of stuck on the fact that the Time Lords were not only still alive, but also _evil_. She'd been picturing a race of people like the Doctor, if perhaps a little less quirky and a little more unyielding and bookish. Instead, they were apparently much more like the Master in terms of their attitudes and ambitions. Not to mention their general level of insanity.

What really didn't go over Rose's head, though, was the humans all around her turning back from versions of the Master to themselves. It was hard to miss that, since there were suddenly no guns pointed at her.

Nor did she fail to comprehend the meaning of Gallifrey being right there right then.

Earth was going to be destroyed.

The people in the room ran screaming, and the Doctor just kneeled on the ground doing nothing. That was perhaps the most shocking thing of all; he wasn't even attempting to act.

Rose saw a man, who'd been just another copy of the Master until about a minute ago, banging frantically on the glass of the cubicle she and the Doctor had used earlier. He looked as if he was about to have a panic attack.

She didn't know about the Doctor, but she couldn't just stand doing nothing at all. Helping one man was better than acting completely useless, at least.

Rose met the Doctor's eyes just in time for him to say, "Don't!" as her hand came down on the red button. The man from the other cubicle fled the building, not so much as saying thank you ("They never do," she remembered the Doctor saying), and the Doctor looked down at the ground, away from her.

Then the Doctor straightened, suddenly on his feet, and pulled out what looked like a kind of alien gun. Rose had become very good at spotting them, having had them aimed at her more times than she could possibly count.

Where had he got that from? Well, probably from the alien spaceship. That was the wrong question. _Why_ did he have it? That was the right one. The Doctor never carried a gun. The last time he'd had a gun trained on something and intended to use it was with that Dalek. Never again, she'd thought. He'd made himself so much better after that (with Rose right there helping him, of course) that Rose had really thought she'd never see that sort of thing again. Not considering his reaction to her killing the Daleks with that gun-like weapon. And certainly, Rose would have thought, not when the gun in question was pointed at one of his own people. Well, back and forth between two of his own people, actually.

But then, she'd understood enough to know that the Doctor had obviously told her of a better time, when he talked about his people. These Time Lords, as they were now, were clearly far more damaged by the Time War than the first incarnation she'd met of the Doctor had been by the time he ran into her. So perhaps it was no more odd that he was aiming at them than that he was aiming a gun at all.

Still, somehow she couldn't quite belief the Doctor could pull the trigger. Not really.

He did, and in doing so he doomed his whole species, but thankfully that was just putting things back to the way they'd already been before the Time Lords had clawed their way out of the War. The Doctor hadn't actually shot anyone. That was good. Rose thought that everything she knew about the universe might have fallen apart if the Doctor had shot someone dead on purpose like that. Certainly, her unswerving faith in his morals and character would have taken a bit of a blow, though of course she knew that she would have forgiven him for it anyway.

She watched the rest of the scene unfold in a bit of shock, really.

Even though the Master protected the Doctor from the main Time Lord in the end for the Master's own revenge, Rose still found herself feeling grateful to him. It didn't matter why he'd done it, just that he had. The Doctor was still alive because of the Master, and Rose couldn't quite hate him because of that.

The light became blinding, and Rose threw her arms up to shield herself from it, clenching her eyelids shut.

Rose opened her eyes again. The glare was gone, and so were the Time Lords. The Master included, it would seem. But not the Doctor, fortunately. He was lying on the floor, thrown back by the blast.

He really did look like a truck had hit him, Rose thought. Well, falling from a space ship into a building was pretty much the same thing, she supposed, except vertical.

But he was alive. That was the important thing. They were both alive.

"Ugh," the Doctor grunted, pulling himself exhaustedly up off the ground.

"You fell through the roof and saved the world with a gun," Rose said disbelievingly. "You big Hollywood action hero, you."

"Rose," the Doctor began, sounding a bit annoyed and staggering a little on his feet as he turned to her. "I told you not to go in –"

Then he stopped, his eyes darting all around her, taking in the cubicle.

Something looked to be wrong with the Doctor, even apart from the cuts all over him. Rose had to squint to even look directly at him, finding it difficult to focus. It might have been just the after-image of the light from the Time Lords, but she didn't quite think so somehow. Everything was blurred, especially him, like the room was spinning a little. Yet somehow it was also still. Everything was so still, even the Doctor, who was just standing there taking in the sight of her, looking immeasurably sad.

Rose recognised this feeling, then. There was nothing wrong with him. It was her. The room wasn't shifting; her reality was.

It did seem to have something to do with the Doctor, though. Well, didn't it always?

She looked away from him. As the strain against her eyes faded, her other senses seemed to clarify. What, Rose suddenly thought, was that crackling noise?

The cubicle suddenly seemed like a much more dangerous place to be standing than it had a moment ago, with its red warning light flickering slightly and that distressing sort of noise coming from very close to her. How long had it been doing that?

"Right," she said. "I think now would be a good time to leave." She looked around at the control panel. "How do I get out when there's no one in the other booth thing? Is there an emergency exit button somewhere?"

"Don't press anything," the Doctor said. The slight note of panic in his voice drew Rose's attention back to him.

"Why not?" she asked slowly, suddenly afraid of the answer. He was still just standing there. Something really wasn't right about this.

"The Master left the nuclear bolt running. It's gone into overload. All that excess radiation will be vented inside the chamber, contained by the Vinvocci glass. And now it's gone critical. Touch one control and it floods."

"Okay," Rose said, "then now would _definitely_ be a good time to get me out of here, don't you think?" There was no immediate reply. "Doctor?" Rose prodded, the word coming out more timidly than she'd intended.

"I can't," he said. "Even the sonic screwdriver would set it off."

"Oh," Rose said. "All right." Her mind raced. Rose tried to pull herself together, knowing falling apart wouldn't help. "Um ... right. Sorry. So. How long do I have?"

The Doctor stared at her sadly for a while. "Rose Tyler. I love you, you know. Just the way you are. But just _occasionally_ I wish you'd stop risking yourself for strangers."

God, Rose thought, she was definitely going to die. She was pretty sure by now that he wouldn't ever say 'I love you' if he was going to have to face up to the fallout of those words. It was like the kiss of death. Better than a kiss, really, but still.

"Yeah, sorry." She found herself giggling frenetically. "Well, I learned from the best, didn't I? Rushing in where angels fear to tread. That's the saying, isn't it?"

The Doctor's face crumpled for a moment and he hid it in his hand. He made a long muffled noise of pain, mixed with frustration. Rose's heart broke for him. He stayed that way for a long time, looking almost like he was shaking. It was hard to tell, with her unable to quite see him clearly through her own fluctuating vision.

When he pulled his hand away, however, he no longer looked broken and slightly unhinged. As well as Rose could make out through the blurring, he just looked miserable and very, very tired.

"Yeah," he said, sounding resigned. "You learned from the best. Where angels fear to tread. It's all right, Rose. I'll get you out. It'll be fine. It's nothing we haven't been through before."

It wasn't? Rose thought slightly hysterically. She didn't know about him, but she'd never been locked away in a tiny space where the only way to get out was by dying. She'd certainly never been in any other life-or-death situation where the Doctor wasn't already getting her out of danger, or at least manically darting about the place trying to think up some brilliant solution that no one but him had any chance of understanding, let alone inventing.

No, this time he was just standing there, looking distraught, while she was about to die. That was definitely new to her, thanks very much.

"It's just ... Rose. I know how much it hurt you last time. I need you to remember that I'm still the same man, no matter what. I need you to be all right with this."

"Oh," Rose breathed, the syllable drawn out in a long note of comprehension. She got it, now. How thick was she?

Of course the door would open if someone went into the other booth and let her out. But touching a button would set the radiation off.

Yes, they'd been here before. His life for hers.

Blurring of the timelines centred around the two of them. Time in flux. A decision to be made.

He'd made his side of the decision already. But Rose had a say as well. And she was already aware of something the Doctor didn't know.

She knew that there was no Rose Tyler in the Doctor's future.

Decision made, the blurring snapped into complete focus. Reality cleared, finally certain. She blinked, concentrating her newly restored sight on the Doctor. She took a second to memorise his features. Rose could finally make out the tear-tracks on his face.

"I love you," she said. "I always will."

The Doctor smiled, looking relieved.

That look, however, faded into confusion as Rose reached for the great big red button that she thought really shouldn't ever be pressed. "Bye then, Doctor," she whispered, holding his gaze.

"_NO_!"

The last thing she saw was the Doctor scrambling frantically towards her, looking like his world was ending.

Sorry, she thought as her eyes slammed closed against the pain of the radiation.


	6. Ood Interlude

Author's Notes: This random little interlude takes place at the beginning of Chapter Five of Speedbumps on the Way to Forever. You really should read that first or this will be a bit WTF. Written for anyone who might have questioned why the Ood took so long to find the Doctor and then showed up where it did. Or for anyone who's dying of the angst in Speedbumps on the Way to Forever and just wants some random fluff. Also, there are some vague Hinty McHinty Hints about a thing or two in the main fic, if you look closely.

* * *

Ood Interlude

Ood Sigma was frustrated. This was a particularly novel experience for him, because the negative emotions of the Ood usually displaced themselves throughout the shared mind so that no one Ood felt them strongly.

The shared mind was, however, so full of apprehension and outright fear at that moment that there was just no room for lesser emotions like, frankly, being a bit annoyed.

Ood Sigma felt, however, that his frustration was warranted. The whole universe – past, present and future – was at risk of blinking out of existence as they knew it, and the only man who could help the Ood solve the problem was apparently too busy gallivanting through the stars to stay still long enough to be found.

There was a strange time reading constantly present around the Doctor, never leaving his side, which made it difficult to pinpoint him. The Ood had tried in vain to find him each time he appeared in each new location, but they always seemed to miss him.

So the Elder Ood had designated that Ood Sigma should wait patiently at one of the locations to which their readings suggested the Doctor frequently returned.

On the first attempt, Ood Sigma had stood in a large, mostly empty space, in front of a tall metal structure with water running freely over it, for days on end. He never was noticed by anyone, even the three humans who kept emerging from seemingly nowhere to run frantically off to their dark vehicle. Ood Sigma watched them curiously. Humans were so very odd, he thought.

Eventually, he gave up on that location. There were too many other beings that didn't belong on Earth running about there for Ood Sigma (who, unlike the others, was neither truly present in that time, nor running amuck) to be noticed by the only humans who might know enough to be able to help him in his task.

The second try was over far too quickly, as if the Ood had encountered some sort of protection technology preventing interference with the location. It stopped Ood Sigma from materialising for long, whatever it was. A yellow human walked past without so much as blinking, clearly unable to see Ood Sigma. Then there was a red human that seemed to have some sort of extra appendage that reached down to the ground, which the human appeared to be leaning heavily on. Ood Sigma recognised the red human as the other half of the Doctor-Donna. She walked slightly past Ood Sigma as well, but then paused. Ood Sigma considered that he might be able to convey a message for the red human to pass along to the Doctor. However, his projection was promptly forced out of the house by a protective barrier of a kind that Ood Sigma had never encountered before, and Ood Sigma was pulled back to the Oodsphere before the red human could turn around fully and get more than a glimpse out of the corner of her eye.

Donna Noble stood in her hallway, looking at what was apparently a blank spot of wall suspiciously. For a moment, she'd thought she'd seen ... but how stupid was that? An Ood, right there in her house, and she would've had to just walk right past it as if it was nothing particularly noticeable. Yeah, right. She swore to lay off those spicy little treats Rose had brought back for her from Sal Wan Olay, or whatever that planet had been called. Clearly, she was going a bit mad stuck in this house, and that stuff obviously wasn't helping. She really had to get out more.

On the third attempt, Ood Sigma appeared in a large room with strange sub-sections. It reminded Ood Sigma of their hive on the home world, if the hive had been overly bright and strangely sterile. Humans streamed in and out, except when the lights went out and the room became completely empty of life but for Ood Sigma.

No one in the room ever seemed to notice Ood Sigma even slightly, unlike the red human. A few times during the wait, humans even reached right through Ood Sigma and pulled out square boxes of some kind, throwing them into peculiar little vehicles or tucking them under their arms. It didn't hurt; Ood Sigma was really only a projection in this world, after all. Still, Ood Sigma would really prefer, after all the time that had passed, that they stop ignoring him. He glared at the humans, knowing that they probably couldn't have told he was glaring even if they could see him properly. Humans were unobservant and a bit unintelligent, on the whole. That was how the Ood had managed to free themselves from them in the first place.

Eventually, though, a yellow human looked directly at Ood Sigma and squished the top half of her face up strangely, particularly around the eyes. The yellow human didn't seem quite like the others. She was not just yellow up the top like the other similar looking humans. She was different.

This was the source, Ood Sigma released, of the disturbance. That was good. It meant the Doctor must finally be nearby, as the disturbance was never far from him.

The yellow human's eyes widened. Beside her, a man flailed strangely, dropping some strange curved yellow items on the ground.

The Doctor, Ood Sigma recognised.

If he could have, Ood Sigma would have rolled his eyes. It was about time.


	7. Chapter Six

Chapter Six

Rose couldn't remember falling asleep, but it wasn't hard to figure out why she might have done. Waking up now, she still felt completely exhausted, like her limbs were so heavy they were seeping down into the soft surface she was lying on.

Rose opened her eyes and then immediately shut them again from the pain of the bright lights making her irises contract sharply. Her whole head seemed to throb. She moaned slightly before prying her eyelids apart again, squinting.

It took a while for her eyes to adjust, but Rose eventually made out that she was lying in a bed in a very white looking room. A hospital, she thought. Was she sick? It would explain why she felt like crap, anyway.

Oh, but no. Rose inhaled deeply suddenly, her eyes widening, clinging onto those very real sensations to try to convince herself that the feeling of being awake wasn't imagined.

She should be dead. She remembered that much.

And yet.

That explained why she was in hospital, anyway, though Rose would have expected to have ended up in the morgue instead of some private recovery room.

A soldier in a red beret, with long rifle-like gun in hand, walked past window of that room. All right, Rose thought, maybe not a hospital.

That uniform was unmistakable. UNIT. What was Rose doing inside UNIT?

"Hello?" she croaked.

No one answered.

"Anyone there?" she called again, and then coughed. Her throat felt clogged somehow, or perhaps just underused.

It took a while, calling out for someone to come along, before the door to the room opened. Rose squinted at the woman who entered.

"I know you," she said, though she wasn't entirely certain it wasn't a lie. The woman looked familiar, sure, but Rose really couldn't place her. She might have been any old UNIT officer, really. In that uniform, and with their uniformly stern faces, they all tended to blur together to her.

"Captain Erisa Magambo," the woman re-introduced herself. "We met at Easter."

"Right," Rose said, drawing the word out and letting her head fall back on the pillow tiredly. "The stingray things. I remember now. You kept asking me stupid questions."

Magambo gave her an unamused sort of smile. "Yes, well. While I wouldn't use the word 'stupid', I will have to continue the trend of asking you questions."

"How about I start?" Rose suggested. "What am I doing here? And where is here?"

"You're inside UNIT Headquarters in London."

"Yeah," Rose said sardonically, "I'd kind of guessed that from the abundance of UNIT soldiers, actually. Believe it or not, I have a lot of experience dealing with you lot."

"And yet," Magambo said, "we have next to no knowledge of _you_, besides your status as an associate of the Doctor. You can see how that might fail to tally up with your story."

"Sorry," Rose said. "Not my problem. I just want to leave."

"It is your problem, actually," Magambo corrected, warning. "We need you to help us make sense of it."

"Or what?" Rose asked.

Magambo cleared her throat. "Do you know why you're here?"

"Because UNIT's kidnapped me to interrogate me?" Rose suggested sarcastically. "You're certainly giving off that impression. I thought that that sort of thing was more Torchwood's area, really, but I guess every organisation has their secrets."

Magambo ignored her. "Do you remember what happened to you?"

Rose looked away. "I died. Or, well, I thought I did. Clearly not. Lucky me, eh?"

"So you remember the radiation?"

Rose looked directly at Magambo, her expression hard. "Pain like I've never felt – which is saying a lot, let me tell you – and someone I love screaming for me? Yeah, that sort of thing sticks with a person, actually. I remember."

"How did you survive?"

"How did I get here?" Rose countered.

Magambo explained, "Radiation vented through the chamber you were standing in, and the UNIT surveillance near the Naismith house picked up the readings. By the time a hazmat team was put together and they all converged on the house, the radiation had stopped flowing. Unfortunately, it was still held contained within the chamber with you, and the chamber failsafe remained locked off until the radiation was dealt with. Ingenious design, really."

"Sure," Rose said bitterly. "Ingenious. How smart of them to make it so I couldn't get out of the damn thing without killing myself, or near enough."

Magambo looked slightly uncomfortable at that, but then said, "But clearly you _aren't_ dead, Ms Tyler."

"You still haven't answered my question," Rose said. "What, UNIT decided to take me in for a bit of testing once they realised I wasn't dead? Is that why I'm here?"

Magambo shook her head. "We thought you were dead, actually. For days, UNIT was under that impression. You seemed dead, and it was hours before we could vent the radiation out of the chamber safely enough to unlock the door and remove your body from inside. A cursory on-the-scene check didn't reveal life signs, even. We'd locked your body away for testing after we decontaminated you. It was purely by chance that one of the medical staff noticed the rise and fall of your chest. You didn't appear to have been breathing until then."

"Slowed life signs, probably," Rose said. "Bit like a coma?"

"So you know what it is?"

"I'm guessing," Rose said, glaring at Magambo. "It doesn't take a genius to figure out. Anyway, that's not the question. That's all just side issues. The question is still how come I'm here. Not just why I was brought here, but why I'm _still_ here. How long has it been?"

"Eight days," Magambo answered promptly.

"And what, none of my friends came looking for me?" Rose asked incredulously.

"The Doctor came for you, of course. After he was released."

Rose frowned. "Released? What? Where is he, then?" she asked.

"He would have insisted on taking you from the house, while there was still radiation everywhere," Magambo said. "He'd gone completely mad, we thought, and had to be restrained just so we could deal with the Naismith building safely. You couldn't be removed, until you'd been decontaminated. The spread of that radiation would have been catastrophic."

"So, what, he thinks I'm dead?" Rose asked in dawning horror. "You haven't told him I'm not?"

"Evidently, he was just as fooled as we were. When the soldiers entered, he was clearly in mourning. His grief was ... to put it kindly, shall we say, uncontrollable? He lashed out at the members of the hazmat team. Here," she said, and picked up some sort of remote control and flicked it at the screen across from Rose.

"Surveillance," Magambo explained, as what looked like CCTV footage started playing on the screen. "We were unable to hack into the Naismith mansion prior to the incident for any number of privacy and political reasons, but after the fact we were able to lay our hands on these internal security recordings."

Rose really didn't want to see it, but she couldn't quite look away from the visual of what appeared to be her own death, though obviously hadn't actually been. It was hard to believe that she was still alive, watching how the radiation had caused her to writhe about in pain until her body gave up the struggle.

Harder still to watch than her own pain was the Doctor's reaction. The footage had no sound, but Rose didn't really need it. She could tell well enough what sort of noises were being made, from the view of the Doctor's face alone. First he was shouting, trying to tug the door of the glass cubicle open to get to her, to no avail. Then he was making a low pained noise as he sank to his knees, his arm still hanging off the door handle as if unwilling to lose contact. Then, at last, he was crying.

Rose felt like an interloper watching the Doctor's grief, even though it was about her. Perhaps it was worse because it was about her, actually; she shouldn't have been able to watch the impact of her own death on someone she cared about. Rose wondered how many UNIT members who had never even met the Doctor in passing had sat and taken notes while watching him cry. Something so rare and personal for him was probably treated like a curiosity. The thought of it made Rose angry.

A team of soldiers and people dressed in hazmat suits showed up on the footage, then, and they all seemed to stop, waiting for the Doctor to move (probably having barked out some order, Rose thought, though she couldn't tell for sure without any sound to support her guess). When the Doctor stayed exactly where he was, crumpled against the glass, his body still shaking slightly, a small group of soldiers moved towards him and attempted to physically remove him.

Rose had seen the Doctor act completely wild before, but not like that. Not wildly _violent_. Not physically throwing a punch, and then another, to prevent others from touching him. He struggled as he was bodily dragged away from the area, even catching one of the officers in the face with a swipe of his elbow.

God, Rose realised, Magambo was right. He'd snapped. Dealing with the Time Lords returning with the end of the universe in their wake, and losing the Master again, and Rose herself dying in front of him ... he'd just lost it. That man that she was watching on the screen didn't even look like the Doctor anymore. She'd seen him regenerate, with all the surface alterations inherent in that, but the sort of change she was witnessing on the screen was on an entirely different level. It scared Rose a lot.

The soldiers eventually bodily dragged the Doctor away from the scene, while the hazmat team moved cautiously in and presumably went about finding a way to filter the radiation safety out of the chamber. Rose had no idea how long that might have taken them, because Magambo turned the recording off.

"Where's the Doctor now?" Rose ground out.

"We're uncertain. The Doctor was put in custody for approximately 32 hours before it was decided that, on a balance, it was likely he didn't present an immediate threat to himself or UNIT or the public. We took into account his past actions in assisting us, and chose to caution him and set him free. With appropriate surveillance to ensure he didn't have some sort of relapse while still on Earth, of course."

With another flick of the remote control, the screen came to life again, but with an entirely different recording. This one didn't appear to be CCTV surveillance, but some kind of portable video camera, with sound and all. The picture was dodgy, though, with the camera jolting around seemingly uncontrollably for a while until it steadied, presumably as the camera operator ceased moving.

At first, Rose couldn't figure out what she was seeing. There were uniformed UNIT soldiers streaming through what looked like civilians, and not a one of them looked as if they were in any hurry or had any specific purpose. They milled around for a while before ambling out of shot. Once enough people moved to sit off to the sides slightly on what looked like benches, Rose recognised that the recording was of a church.

Was that Sylvia Noble? Yes, and there was Wilf beside her. Rose squinted at the screen, looking for Donna, who was nowhere to be seen.

The camera looked around as well, and Rose caught sight of a coffin.

"Oh. My. God," Rose said, looking at Magambo incredulously. "Is this a funeral? Did you take _home movies_ of a funeral? How sick are you?"

"Not 'home movies', Ms Tyler. This was a live surveillance feed, taken covertly. We wanted to avoid having to prevent him from attending, and the only way to do that was to keep a constant eye on him."

Magambo gestured at the screen.

Well, Rose thought, there was Donna. Standing beside her, both of them off to the side of the church away from the seating area, was the Doctor. His expression was completely closed off, and his arms were crossed defensively across his chest. He looked like he was about to bolt at any moment, actually, as if only Donna's arm clutching at him was keeping him still.

Rose didn't blame him for that. The Doctor wasn't really the funeral type. She wondered why ...

Oh. She was an idiot.

"You let them give me a _funeral_?" Rose asked darkly. "Even though I'm not dead? And you _recorded_ it? Okay, I take back what I said before. _That's_ sick. Was this before or after you realised I was alive?"

Magambo remained silent, and Rose took that to mean 'after'.

"But why did they ... there wasn't even a body."

"We informed them that your body would have to be incinerated due to the radiation."

"Why lie?" Rose asked.

"At the time," Magambo said carefully, "we believed that to be true."

"And, what," Rose said disbelievingly, "you just forgot to send out the memo when you realised you were wrong?"

Magambo shifted. "It was decided that you would have to be contained inside UNIT for the foreseeable future. That would have become impossible if we'd informed your people that you were still alive."

"_Why_?"

"Because, Ms Tyler, we believe that you may be a significant threat," Magambo said. Rose could tell from her tone that, however much she might regret some of what had been done, _that_ was something that she completely stood behind. "And while the Doctor was attempting to get to you, dead or not, he presented an even greater threat. You saw that recording at the Naismith location. He couldn't be trusted."

"I can't believe this," Rose said, frustrated. "All right, maybe you don't have personal experience in this. I'll tell you now, I've been through enough death to know. That's what happens when people think someone they're close to has died. They _grieve_. Sometimes they're not all that rational about it. But funny thing, Captain. If it turns out that the person they thought had died actually didn't, that would usually make them happy. Then you wouldn't have to worry about them acting out of character or whatever."

"We couldn't risk the Doctor attempting to retrieve you from inside UNIT," Magambo said unemotionally.

"God," Rose groaned, "what is _wrong_ with you people. He's not an idiot. And he's not some violent monster."

"We very much hope you're right," Magambo said. "But he wouldn't have taken no for an answer about seeing you if he'd known you were alive. We couldn't risk him finding a way to break you out of UNIT. We've seen the Doctor at work often enough; we know he would have been able to manage it."

Rose scoffed. "And what, I'm a prisoner?"

"You're under quarantine."

"Why?" Rose asked. "I was only a public threat so long as the radiation was all stuck to me or whatever. Clearly the radiation's all gone now, or you wouldn't be standing right there talking to me."

Magambo shook her head. "It isn't the radiation you're being quarantined for at this stage. UNIT believes you pose a potentially much larger threat. Anything that could survive that level of radiation must be cleared before it can be let out into the public."

Any _thing_, Rose noted. That really wasn't a good sign.

She squinted suspiciously at Magambo. "And how do I go about getting 'cleared', exactly?"

"Well, supposing you really aren't any threat, it's simple enough. If you comply." The way Magambo stressed those last three words gave Rose a sinking sort of feeling. She wasn't feeling particularly compliant at the moment, actually. "We have three questions for you to answer, Ms Tyler, and then we will review whether you are free to go."

"You can't keep me here," Rose said, frowning. "You're not exactly some super-secret organisation that's above the law. UNIT's part of the government, and I'm a human being. I have rights."

"That," Magambo said pointedly, "is currently in doubt. You are listed as no longer being a citizen of the United Kingdom, having apparently died several years ago in the Battle of Canary Wharf. Now you are showing signs of beyond-human capabilities. For all we know, you are not actually Rose Tyler. That makes you a potential alien threat. UNIT has the capacity to keep you isolated indefinitely. That is, unless you give us the information we need in order to revoke the status of 'alien threat'."

Rose shook her head. "I'm not an alien, or a threat," she insisted. "Honestly, _UNIT_. You lot never see shades of grey, do you?"

"If you're not a threat, the answers will be simple, and you will be free to go. We're not unreasonable."

That was debatable.

Rose sighed. "Questions?" she prompted tiredly.

"The first is how you survived the radiation."

"I don't know," Rose lied. "I expected to be dead," she added, and that part was not so much a lie.

"Ms Tyler, don't play games."

"I'm not," Rose responded. "I don't know."

Magambo looked her over and clearly decided the best tactic for now was to let it lie. That didn't encourage Rose to feel hopeful that she'd be getting out of there any time soon, somehow.

Rose saw in her peripheral vision as Magambo fast-forwarded the recording of the funeral, which had kept playing while they'd been talking even though Rose had refused to look in its direction. She really didn't want to watch her own funeral, let alone watch a zoomed-in image of the Doctor and Donna throughout her funeral.

The sound came back on, signalling that the recording was once again playing at normal speed. Rose still didn't look directly at it. Magambo cleared her throat pointedly.

"I don't want to see it, Captain," Rose said forcefully. "Surely you can imagine why. It's completely disgusting, making me watch my fake funeral."

"If you don't watch, we can't ask you the questions we need to. If you can't answer the questions, we can't let you go. Be reasonable."

Rose scowled and looked up at the screen just in time to see the Doctor, stone-faced, snap something unintelligible at Donna, clearly rounding off a fight of some sort. Donna attempted to reach for the Doctor to comfort him. He promptly shrugged her off and paced across the church away from her.

The camera operator, judging by the recommencement of the earlier shaking and movement of the image, stood up and followed. A few moments later, though, he or she stopped a fair distance away from where the Doctor had also ceased moving.

Rose squinted at the image until it stopped shaking around. Then her eyes widened.

River Song. At Rose's funeral. _That_ was not right.

The Doctor seemed to agree.

"You don't get to be here," he said loudly. "Not _here_. I don't care who you are to me one day. Right now, I want you gone."

River looked at him sadly. "So you can go off and do something stupid?"

"What's it to you?" the Doctor barked.

"Who do you think asked me to come?"

The Doctor looked incredulous, then. "There's no way I'd want to send you here," he said. "Ever."

Then their voices dropped too low for the camera to pick up from that distance. The visual pretty much said it all, though. The two of them clearly hissed angrily at each other. The Doctor gestured pointedly at what Rose recognised even from a distance, even taking into account the slightly-below-perfect quality picture, as a Vortex Manipulator around River's wrist.

After awhile, Rose caught the word, "Go," as the Doctor raised his voice slightly again. "Look, I won't do anything stupid. Just ... let me have this time. I need you to not be anywhere near this. Or near me, right now."

River hesitated, but then nodded. She looked like she wanted to hug him, but she could apparently tell as easily as Rose could that the Doctor wouldn't have stood for it. Instead, she just turned around and left.

The Doctor turned around as well, and headed back towards the front end of the church. Towards the camera. _Directly_ towards the camera, as it happened.

"And you," the Doctor called out, looking just slightly upwards of the camera lens, presumably at the person the camera was attached to. "The funeral is over. UNIT has no business hanging around now, if they ever did."

"Sorry, sir," a man's voice – the cameraman, Rose supposed – said, "but we're just paying our respects."

"No," the Doctor said, his voice low and dangerous. "That's what these other people are doing." Rose noticed that he didn't include himself in that number. "_You_ are spying on me. Now is not the time for you to try your hand at that, trust me. So you can just turn around and walk away now, before both of us end up regretting it. Because if there's anything you don't want to do right now, right at this moment in time, it's get on my bad side."

The camera operator did, in fact, promptly turn and walk away. Briskly, if the increased jostle of the camera was any indication.

Rose didn't blame him. The Doctor had plainly been wearing his Oncoming Storm face. Whole legions had fled at the sight of it. One human man wasn't exactly likely to stick around, unless he was very foolish and had little or no self-preservation instincts.

The cameraman's voice came over the link once the recording showed he'd completely exited the church. "Report," he said. "The target has clearly undertaken several confrontations with human beings over the course of the event with no physicality or other serious threats ensuing. Suggest that it is safe to recommence usual minimum surveillance on him during his time on Earth. Suggest also, however, that UNIT forces keep reasonable distance from the target for the foreseeable future. Finally, request that information be compiled on the unknown female associate of the Doctor, taking into account the presence of alien equipment in the form of a wristband. End transmission."

Then the camera was obviously switched off, as the screen went black.

"So," Magambo said finally. "The second question we need you to answer is who that woman was, and what was her purpose in being here?"

"That's two questions," Rose said.

"Don't get cute," Magambo warned.

"Fine. Her name's Donna Noble," Rose bluffed, "and she's –"

"We're well aware of who Ms Noble is," Magambo interrupted. "I was referring to the second woman."

"Never seen her before," Rose said flippantly.

"We know she's from the future," Magambo continued heedlessly, "based on our awareness of the origin of her wrist device. We also know that she used that device to get here, rather than being brought here by the Doctor. As you clearly saw, the Doctor treated her with hostility far beyond his reactions to others at the funeral, leading us to believe they are enemies. Yet the Doctor has chosen to give her free reign in our time. You can imagine, Ms Tyler, that UNIT is very wary of this, especially considering the Doctor's recent behaviour in acting against us."

"He's saved the world multiple times," Rose said angrily. "If it weren't for him you wouldn't even _be_ here!"

"Yes," Magambo said. "We are well aware of that fact, thank you. That was the only reason the Doctor was deemed free to go up until now."

"But you're treating him like a criminal!" Rose said, exasperated.

"No," Magambo countered, "we're merely keeping an eye on him, for his benefit as much as the Earth's. This woman, on the other hand, has no past actions to recommend her to us, and the Doctor does not seem to be on good terms with her."

"Not yet," Rose muttered under her breath.

Magambo narrowed her eyes at Rose, but clearly hadn't quite caught the words, because she continued, "We require information about her and her purpose here."

"I literally can't give you information about her," Rose said. "I don't know her."

"Pardon me, ma'am, but I find that hard to believe, based on your reaction to seeing her at your supposed funeral."

"I was annoyed at seeing some woman making eyes at the Doctor, actually," Rose said, trying to keep her tone calm and pretty much completely failing. "You can imagine how that might make me feel, I'm sure, especially considering the setting."

"Perhaps," Magambo conceded. "That's probably even part of it. I don't believe, however, that that's all there is to it."

"I can't tell you something I don't know," Rose said.

"All right," Magambo said. "Then I'll put the last question to you. This one's an answer that you definitely will know. Has the Doctor become a threat to Earth?"

Rose bared her teeth angrily in a parody of a smile. "Oh, I see. You're just watching him to help him out, sure. But what you really want to know is whether you should lock him up in a cage and question _him_."

"You're not in a cage," Magambo reasoned.

Rose looked around. "The bars are solid walls instead. I see no other difference."

"Just tell us whether the Doctor is a threat."

"Go. To. Hell," Rose enunciated.

Magambo sighed at her response. "Then, unfortunately, we can't allow you to leave. Until you can prove you are willing to comply, you yourself remain an unknown risk."

"I told you, I'm not a threat!" Rose cried.

Magambo tipped her head at Rose. "We'd like to believe you, ma'am. Really. But it isn't safe to take your word for it. Not with the safety of six billion human beings on the line if we let you go. We need _proof_."

She walked out and left Rose sitting up alone in the bed, holding in the loud noise of frustration that battled the tight feeling in her throat, vying for release.

The door shut and an electronic lock was enabled. The sound was solid. Final.

Rose gritted her teeth and couldn't quite stop herself from pounding her fist down on the mattress. 

* * *

"Are you ready to talk yet, Ms Tyler?"

"You keep asking that. The answer hasn't changed. I don't know the answers to your questions." 

* * *

"You could leave if you would just talk to us."

"You could set me free without me having to say a word. This has nothing to do with you wanting to make sure I'm safe to be let into the public. You just want answers."

"Regardless of whether that's the case or not, it's in your best interests to tell us what we want to know."

"I can't." 

* * *

"We've discovered a sort of energy combined with your DNA, Ms Tyler. You can't possibly tell me you were unaware of it."

"Can't I?"

"If you don't start being honest with us, you'll be locked away permanently. UNIT has cells for just that purpose, as you're probably aware. And they really aren't anywhere near as comfortable as this room."

"I don't do well with threats."

"I'm sorry to hear that." 

* * *

"Does the state of your fingernails and hair have anything to do with the energy I mentioned last time I was in here?"

"I couldn't say. I might be just badly groomed. Two-tone's a good look, don't you think?"

"If you insist on making a game out of this, Ms Tyler, you know what will happen. UNIT doesn't appreciate having its time wasted."

"You mean _you_ don't."

"That too."

"Sorry. I don't work to other people's schedules." 

* * *

"Stop being stubborn. You could have been out of here by now, presuming you're actually telling the truth about not being dangerous."

"If you're going to presume that, then you can just let me out now."

"If you're not a threat, then you can just answer our questions."

"Sounds like stalemate to me, Captain."

"That's a shame. All of this could have been avoided, you know."

"Yeah, it could have. It could have been avoided if you'd never left the people I care about to think I was dead once you knew otherwise. I think we've gone a bit far for 'if only', don't you?"

"I'm sorry you feel that way."

"Not sorry enough." 

* * *

After a month, Rose realised that Magambo hadn't been lying. They really were prepared to just keep her in this room for as long as it took her to tell them what they wanted to hear.

Rose had been through torture before. Painful torture. Torture that might have killed a woman with a lesser physical constitution, if she was honest. She didn't break easily.

However, even though she'd had a month to dig in her heels, she had also spent a lot of that time thinking.

There was one question she was never going to answer, no matter what UNIT said or did. Rose wasn't going to talk to them about the Doctor. She wouldn't betray him like that.

As for the other two questions, the secrets she was protecting wouldn't do UNIT any good anyway. There was some small hope that answering those questions would buy her enough good will to get her the hell out of there. With that in mind, it really wasn't worth continuing not telling them her answers to those questions just for the sake of being stubborn. Not if they were really never going to give in otherwise.

A month, Rose kept thinking. It was nothing, really, on her end. She'd been through far worse. She was comfortable enough, if completely bored and really rather pissed off at UNIT. But for the Doctor ...

He'd spent over a month thinking she was dead. She needed to see him, to let him know that she really wasn't, as soon as possible. Because if it had been her, thinking he was dead, she knew just how terrible that time would have seemed. She knew the sorts of things she might have been driven to.

The Doctor was smart. He knew a lot more than Rose did. He knew not to mess around with timelines, certainly. Usually. However, he hadn't seemed all that stable on those recordings Rose had seen. Rose didn't have any delusions that the Doctor wasn't capable of doing terrible things. He wasn't known as the Oncoming Storm for nothing.

Rose never had thought she'd be grateful for River Song. If the other woman had managed to get the Doctor to see reason, though, Rose thought she just might be willing to put aside any resentment she was harbouring towards the other woman. For now. She couldn't make any long-term promises on that front.

Still, enough was enough. Rose had to see him.

When Magambo walked in for that day's interrogation (disguised, as always, as pleasant questioning), Rose didn't even wait for her to open her mouth.

"I lived because of a type of energy," Rose said. "It's time energy that was inside my body for so long that it altered me on a biological level so that my cells combat degeneration of different sorts. At least, that's what I think happened. I don't age. I don't get sick. I heal really quickly when I'm injured, to a point. But I can still die. I thought I would have died, with that radiation. I've never been injured that badly, so I don't really know the limits."

"So it could hypothetically be limitless," Magambo interrupted, looking far too interested for Rose's comfort. "You could live through anything."

"No," Rose said firmly. "Bomb explodes? I'm dead. There's nothing to heal, you see. I just don't know where the exactly the line is drawn. Apparently the radiation was on this side of that line. It just hurt me a _lot_. My damaged cells took a while to replace, obviously, but they clearly managed. The replacement process tends to speed up when it needs to, you see. Hence the nails." Rose held up her hands, with their ridiculously long fingernails, up in demonstration. "And the hair. They always grow faster than they should – which makes it hell to keep up on the dye job, let me tell you – but not like this, usually. Not this much.

"But here's the thing," Rose continued. "You can't duplicate the effect. It's not something that you can use to make an army, or to save lives. It was a one-off. Even if it wasn't, the process was fatal. It just so happened that, in the circumstances, it was fatal to someone else instead of _me_. Knowing about it won't help you."

"If it's dangerous, you remain a danger to the population," Magambo reasoned.

"No," Rose said. "I'm really not. The process itself is dangerous, but I've been fine for hundreds of years. It's stable."

"Hundreds of years?" Magambo asked, sounding disbelieving. "UNIT records place you at approximately 24 years of age."

"UNIT records also say I'm dead," Rose shot back. "Guess they aren't all that accurate, huh?"

"It's all very well to give us this story, but you can't provide any proof to back it up," Magambo said then.

"You've seen the tests," Rose said. "You know there's a type of energy inside me, and you know it isn't radiation or anything else that's doing any harm, to me or anyone else. Also, even though you haven't mentioned it, I daresay you've tried to isolate the energy from my cells and couldn't. I know this because Torchwood did the same. The rest you'll just have to take my word on. Or not, I suppose," Rose laughed mirthlessly.

The rest of her life could potentially last for a very long time. Rose would hate to spend it stuck inside UNIT.

"All right," Magambo said. "I'll convey the information to our scientists, and if they're satisfied, UNIT will be satisfied. Provided, of course, that you provide us with the further information we've asked you about."

"I wasn't lying, you know," Rose said. "I really don't know that woman. I've never met her."

"But you recognise her," Magambo said. It wasn't a question.

"I know who she is, yes," Rose said. "She travels with the Doctor sometimes, that's all. The only reason she was here in this century was for him. He probably even sent her himself, by the sound of it. A future him, I mean."

"It didn't look like he was happy to see her," Magambo remarked.

Rose looked at her shrewdly. "Imagine, Captain, that you met someone who apparently knew you in your future, and was apparently very close to you. Would you want her hanging around at your current dead lover's funeral, do you think?"

For the first time throughout any of the questioning Rose had been put through, Magambo looked truly regretful, rather than just slightly uncomfortable. "Of course not. But you haven't told me who she is, still."

"And I won't," Rose said. "It's not something UNIT needs to know, and I don't know for sure that telling you information about someone from the future wouldn't harm the timelines. It's not worth it, just to satisfy your curiosity. She's not a threat. Not to you, anyway."

"Somehow I don't find that comforting. And the Doctor?"

"Like I said the first time, I'm not talking about him, except to say that you're idiots if you turn your back on everything he's done for you up until now."

"I believe your exact words were 'go to hell'," Magambo pointed out.

"I stick by them, too," Rose agreed. "I've told you all you're going to get from me on that topic." Rose crossed her arms. "The rest is the Doctor's business, not yours. I'm not going to provide information on tap about his life for you. You want that? Find another source, if you can. That's all I'm willing to say."

Magambo studied her for a while, and then nodded sharply and left the room. 

* * *

Two days later, UNIT released Rose without so much as an apology.

Bastards, Rose thought as she left the building as quickly as she could, glancing suspiciously behind her as she went. 

* * *

"Come on," Rose said, "pick up already!"

The phone rang and rang, but no answer came. Rose hung up in frustration, slamming the payphone receiver down. Then she redialled.

"I swear, if you're just ignoring the phone ..." she breathed in annoyance, but then the phone was answered.

It wasn't the Doctor's voice.

For a horrified moment, Rose thought that he'd regenerated already, despite her sacrifice. That wasn't supposed to happen. She'd been worried that everything might have gone wrong while she'd been locked away inside UNIT. What if he'd got himself killed (or close enough)?

Then the voice said something about her having called a prison of some sort, and Rose went from near-frantic to just plain confused. Wrong number?

"I'm looking for the Doctor," she said.

There was a long pause, and some voices in the background that Rose couldn't quite make up. The next voice she heard, however, still wasn't the Doctor's. Not unless the Doctor's eleventh body was a woman.

Well, it _was_ the one body of his since his ninth that Rose had never seen. She supposed anything could happen.

"Hello?"

"I need to speak to the Doctor," Rose said.

"He's not here," the woman said. "You've phoned the Time Vortex. Your call was diverted to me because he can't be reached, and because I'm the one most likely to be able to find him. What do you need?"

Most likely to find him. Oh, Rose thought. _Now_ she thought she recognised that voice.

"River Song?" she asked, certain she already knew the answer.

"_Doctor_ River Song, yes," River confirmed. "Do you know me?"

Rose hung up the phone, suddenly breathing hard. 

* * *

Rose knew she had to track the Doctor down soon. She also knew that UNIT may have only let her go so that they could track her to him. They did seem to be overly interested in him lately, after all, and they'd barely explained why they'd suddenly decided to let Rose go. She wasn't at all sure that it had been merely that her explanations had satisfied them. Not with two whole days having passed before she was allowed to leave.

It stunk of a trap for the Doctor. Too bad for them, though, Rose Tyler never intended to play the part of willing bait.

She spent three days of jumping from hotel to hotel, using different aliases at each, and using every tactic she knew to throw UNIT off her trail if they were following her. On the fourth, Rose strolled out onto a bustling London street. She headed for the nearest tube stop. Many hours later, she stepped off a train into Cardiff Station.

It was just a short walk to the Bay from there. Had it not been for the fact that she was almost certain UNIT would have Torchwood under some form of surveillance, Rose would have just stood in front of the Roald Dahl Plass and waited. As it was, she hugged her arms around herself in an attempt to block out the chill breeze, and went around the back way.

When she let herself into the Hub, no one even noticed at first. Crack security, there, Rose couldn't help but think. Then one of the team – Ianto, Rose thought he was called – soon alerted the others to her presence.

When Jack saw her, he sprang to his feet as if it was an involuntary reflex caused by the shock. He stood in place for a while, just staring at her, as if he didn't really believe she was standing there. Two minutes later, he was still looking at her as if he was astonished by her continued existence.

He was one to talk, Rose mused humourlessly.

"You ..." Jack started, but couldn't quite seem to get out the rest of his thought.

"Hi," Rose said.

"Are you ..." Jack seemed to be choosing his words very carefully. "Is this _after_, for you?"

The hazards of time travel, Rose realised. Of course he'd wonder whether this was her from before she'd supposedly died. It really probably made more sense to him than the idea of her somehow living through it without any of them being aware.

"Yeah," Rose said. "I'm alive."

Mere moments later, there were arms around her, and Rose let herself collapse into them.

She didn't cry, but it was a near thing. 

* * *

"You need my help?" Jack asked.

"Yeah," Rose said. "I need to find the Doctor."

Jack frowned. "Rose, you've got the same phone numbers I do. He hasn't contacted me since ... since." He looked incredibly uncomfortable, and Rose immediately knew he was talking about the funeral. Her funeral. "And I spoke to Donna Noble not two days ago. She mentioned she hadn't seen him and he wouldn't answer her calls."

"Have _you_ tried calling him?" Rose asked.

"Yeah," Jack said.

"And did anyone answer?" she asked carefully.

Jack frowned. "I was calling the TARDIS. Who other than the Doctor would have answered?"

"No one," Rose said quickly. Too quickly, obviously.

Jack's face looked pitying. "Rose, if you think he'd just go and replace –"

"It's got nothing to do with that," Rose deflected, not even letting him finish the thought. If he said it out loud, that made the possibility real, she thought. Jack didn't know just how possible it was that she might be replaced, in every sense. Jack presumably had no knowledge of River.

At least, Rose hoped not. She couldn't bear to ask him more directly about River right now, just in case he revealed that he was aware of her and her relationship with the Doctor. If he'd kept something that important from Rose, she really didn't want to know about it.

Jack's eyes further softened towards her, but he let the topic drop.

"Well, anyway," Jack said slightly bitterly, "the Doctor certainly doesn't seem to be willing to pick up the phone for any of us, let alone put in a visit. Like we weren't all devastated as well."

"What, he's just shut you all out?" Rose asked with a frown.

Jack chuckled mirthlessly. "I'm not surprised, really," he said. "It's what he does, isn't it? He hasn't been seen back on Earth in the last month or so either, that we're aware of. That's not a ridiculously long amount of time for him to be away usually, but ..."

"But recently we'd been visiting more regularly," Rose finished. "And now he's not."

"Exactly," Jack said. "So, I'd love to help you. You know I'd do just about anything for you, Rose. But I don't know what I can do that you can't do yourself."

Rose bit her lip for a moment, and then met Jack's eyes. "I just need you to tell me when he comes back." 'When', she'd said, not 'if'. She couldn't possibly consider that he wouldn't come back to Earth soon. The whole planet would fall apart without him checking in regularly, surely. "You've got equipment that can track him, right? When he comes to Earth."

Jack gave her an uncertain look. "Not absolutely anywhere on the planet. But we did manage to extrapolate some tracking technology from the old Doctor detector I had."

Rose nodded. "His hand; he mentioned. You must have scared your staff half to death with that sort of weird stuff lying about."

Rose shot a look at the man and woman across the Hub, who were both obviously staring at her. Caught in the act, they each immediately seemed to find something else to do with themselves. Not particularly good at covert ops, then, Rose noted.

"They seem nice," Rose added softly, gesturing at them. "Gwen and Ianto, isn't it? How is it I've inside the Hub five times now and never met them?"

Jack smiled. "Because I like to keep the separate parts of my life separate," he said, though not unkindly. "It's just easier that way."

Rose raised her eyebrows at him. "Oh, so I'm just someone to be compartmentalised away, am I?" she teased half-heartedly.

Jack, on the other hand, looked deadly serious. "Not if you don't want to be. We're still several people down. Torchwood's fairly difficult to recruit for these days. I wasn't kidding when I offered you a job that first time. The offer's still open, always."

Rose shook her head. "The Doctor will be back soon," she said, sounding much surer than she felt. "When he comes back, I'll be going with him again. No point making a commitment here and then having to run out on you."

Jack shrugged easily. "So don't make a commitment," he offered. "Just help us out for now. At least that way you'll be close at hand if our equipment locates the Doctor."

Rose closed her eyes, sighing. "I don't think so, Jack. I had to take a lot of precautions to make sure UNIT was off my back."

"I noticed," Jack said with a slight smirk. "Nice disguise. I like the hair."

"I missed being ginger," Rose admitted. "And thanks, but so not the point. The thing is, there's just no point in me announcing my presence to UNIT again by getting involved in official Torchwood business. I need to keep a low profile for a while."

"So what, you're just going to lie low?" Jack asked. "Indefinitely? _You_?"

"Yeah," Rose said, slightly indignantly. "Me. I've done it before."

"No offence," Jack said, "but you can't keep out of trouble for a day at a time. You're almost worse than _him_."

"It won't be for that long," Rose said firmly, leaving no room for disagreement. "He'll be back soon, and then I can go see him and tell him what happened. I just need you to call me, to tell me where."

Jack simply nodded. Rose silently thanked him for allowing her to keep her delusions, if that was what they turned out to be.

"Any day now," she said. 

* * *

Nearly seven and a half weeks after Christmas Day, Rose received a phone call.

She'd never driven a car so fast in her life. 

* * *

Brown pinstripes, hair that looked like it was reaching for the stars. Rose saw those things from a distance and her face burst into a grin, even though her lungs were about to burst in general from the exertion.

It didn't even hurt, for a moment. She was too happy just then to hurt.

But he looked sort of ... content. That was what pulled a gasping Rose, who'd been careening down the footpath towards him, first to a halt, and then behind a building to watch him from afar. She needed a moment to figure things out for a moment before she made a potentially time-altering mistake.

This couldn't be him. Not _her_ him, at least. Not the one who'd just witnessed her death just shy of two months ago. She hadn't thought he'd be crying or anything. That wasn't what he was like. However, she'd thought he would look sort of ... shut off. Maybe there was a bit of that, looking at him now, but it wasn't nearly as much as she'd thought.

So it wasn't him. Not yet.

Damn him, she thought. This must be from when she'd been in the parallel universe still. He was alone for the moment, but Donna, or Martha, or maybe even someone else he hadn't thought to mention to Rose, was probably lurking around somewhere. Someone who had helped him cope with losing Rose and his little surrogate family during the Torchwood fiasco, and with all the terrible things that had happened to him since.

Rose wanted to leave, then. She was disappointed, certainly, but there would be another day not too far in her future when the right version of him would turn up. If there was any place someone could be assured of finding the Doctor, it was the United Kingdom, and London specifically, in the late 20th century or early 21st century. She just had to give it a little more time.

Rose had waited 450 years for him once. She could wait a few more weeks this time, no matter how much it hurt to have to do so when she'd thought the wait was over.

However, as much as she might have wanted to get away from the temptation of seeing him (which reminded her so much of her travels through timelines and universes), Rose didn't leave just then. She'd been almost about to go when she'd caught sight of someone coming up from behind the Doctor.

It was suddenly obvious that, just as Rose had thought, the Doctor wasn't alone after all. But it wasn't Donna or Martha who was with him.

It was River.

It took Rose a moment to quite believe what she was seeing, really. She'd known that the Doctor had brought River to the early 21st century a few times, of course. The Doctor spent a lot of his time there, so it had been fairly inevitable that anyone who travelled with him would end up there as well.

It was one thing for him to bring her to the general era. It was another for her to be there during what was, by all accounts, the first time the Doctor had come back since the funeral. After the way he'd reacted to River on that day, Rose would never have expected that. Nor would she have really expected he'd be so ... not upset, to have her around, looking as though she had every right to be there.

Perhaps it was ridiculous of her, but Rose really had thought that this exact time and place was ... off limits. It was _hers_. River didn't belong.

Then again, there'd been a time when Rose had thought River didn't belong with the Doctor at all, and hadn't quite been able to believe her eyes.

A time very similar to this one, actually.

_Very_ similar.

Rose suddenly felt such a wave of déjà vu that she thrust herself out a bit further from behind the building she was hiding against to get a better look.

Impossible, she thought.

But it wasn't. Of course it wasn't. 16 February 2010. She was an idiot.

She hadn't just seen this sort of thing before. Rose had seen _this_ before. This exact scene. Right now, or within the next few minutes, there would be a Rose from well over a year earlier in her personal time stream lurking somewhere behind a bush, if she recalled correctly. That Rose would be watching this same scene with an even deeper sense of dawning horror than Rose herself was currently feeling.

During her travels from parallel to parallel, when Rose had seen River Song striding along with the Doctor at heel, she'd had to double check that she was in the right universe. Triple check, even. Quadruple check, for god's sake, with no apparent change to what she already knew.

It was _her_ world, definitely. Her original universe, that was, not the one in which she'd spent the majority of her life up until then. That woman, who looked at the Doctor as if she clearly adored him, was there in the Doctor's future, in the early 21st century.

And Rose clearly wasn't.

Forget the Doctor telling her that he couldn't come for her on Bad Wolf Bay. _That_ had been the single most devastating revelation she'd ever gone through. Decades of working towards getting back to him, and what was there to show for it? She wasn't even with him in his future, after all of that.

Rose had even jumped around the Doctor's timeline a bit, praying for it to have been a one-off. The Doctor and Rose had been momentarily separated before, after all. But no, there he was, always without Rose by his side. River had showed up more than once, though; that hadn't been a coincidence either.

Many of those times the Doctor had even worn the same face as the last time she'd seen him, all spiky hair and sideburns coupled with adorable over-enthusiasm. Rose knew the Doctor could hypothetically live for centuries in the same body, but it was the _Doctor_. He took too many risks. His life expectancy just wasn't that high. So some of those scenes that Rose had watched unfold in front of her, hidden away with her Vortex Manipulator poised to sweep her away to the next scene, clearly weren't _that_ far in the Doctor's personal future.

Rose hadn't seen a lot of the later years of the Doctor's life. Admittedly, she also hadn't seen all that much detail of even the time he'd spent in this current incarnation. There was just so much to see, and Rose hadn't been sure she even wanted to know it all. She had, however, still managed to see enough to be able to draw up something of a rough timeline of the things she'd witnessed. This meeting that Rose was seeing now between the Doctor and River Song (whose name Rose hadn't known at the time when she'd first watched the two of them on this street) had fallen, for the Doctor, about thirty years after he'd said goodbye to Rose at Bad Wolf Bay.

Rose recalled that now, stricken.

She realised she'd been unconsciously holding her breath and focused on pulling long deep breaths into her lungs.

It hadn't been a month and a half since the Doctor had believed Rose had died at all. For him, it had been something like twenty-five years.

A quarter of a century. And there the Doctor and River were, already involved in some sort of relationship. So how could Rose run over there and reveal herself to be alive now?

It would be too painful. On all of them. Rose had also already seen for herself that that didn't happen. Rose couldn't just reintroduce herself into the Doctor's life now. The timelines she'd seen would collapse.

They couldn't be allowed to do that. The universe hinged on them.

The Doctor had to develop a deep enough relationship with River Song that he trusted her completely. It was necessary for a number of reasons, but for one specific fixed event particularly.

Rose couldn't change that. But neither did she think she could watch that happen right in front of her. She'd figured, when she'd realised she was gone from his life by this point, that she must have already died.

God, Rose thought silently, forcing herself fully back around the corner of the building and slumping slightly against the brick wall that was now at her back.

Rose hadn't wanted to die. Of course not. She'd lived too long already, perhaps, but she'd just found the Doctor again so recently. She'd wanted to stay with him for as long as possible. But she'd known that couldn't be forever. She'd thought that moment, in the radiation chamber, had been the reason for that.

She'd never thought it would have to be her own choice to not be there in the Doctor's future.

This was the real reason, though. Not her death, but merely the fact that too long had passed. Twenty-five missed years because of a misunderstanding engineered by UNIT. If Rose had been annoyed at them before, she was pretty sure now that she just might properly hate them for this.

Too long had passed, and now the events Rose had seen were already in motion. She had to make the rational choice, for the benefit of the whole universe. She couldn't jeopardise _everything_ by disrupting the timelines just for her own happiness. She wouldn't be able to live with herself if she did.

It meant she might never be with the Doctor again. The idea made her ache all over, and not at all in a pleasant way. But it had to be that way. She couldn't see any way around it.

Rose heard the Doctor's voice, and what she also half-recognised as River's voice as well, passing by her hiding place. She pressed herself harder against the brick, as if that unyielding surface would somehow protect her from detection if the Doctor turned to look her way.

He didn't. Just as Rose remembered from when she'd watched this same scene from a different viewpoint, he didn't look anywhere but straight ahead, except to glance once in the exact opposite direction from where Rose was standing to look at River as she said something.

Rose slid to the ground, the back of her shirt scraping against the sharp irregularities of the wall.

He'd been right there, and she'd let him go.

She'd had to.

Was that it? Was that the last time she'd even _see_ the Doctor? The last time she'd hear his voice?

No, Rose told herself, suddenly hardening. She wouldn't let that be the end of it. She'd see him again.

The Doctor and River had been involved in a number of fixed events throughout their acquaintance (yeah, Rose thought wryly, 'acquaintance' was the word for it, sure). Rose had seen several of those events. She knew they had to happen. But most of them happened while he was still in this body. And one, the biggest of all, had happened much later, and _would_ happen as long as those earlier events were allowed to take place. Everything in between was a little more up in the air.

Rose might be able to get back to him, she realised. One day. If she was lucky.

There was one sure and obvious sign that the fixed points she'd seen were in his past, and already taken care of, after which Rose could find him again, and be with him.

Once he'd regenerated. 


	8. Chapter Seven

Author's Notes: This chapter contains adult material.

* * *

Chapter Seven

Rose received calls from Jack Harkness about a range of things. Every now and then, though, the calls just consisted of a location, and the advice, "Go find him."

Rose knew that what Jack really meant by that was that she should track down the Doctor and actually reveal herself. Rose also knew that she couldn't. Not yet.

Most of the time, when she went looking for him, Rose had completely missed the Doctor by the time she arrived at the location in question. He was always on the move — always _running_ — so that was hardly a surprise, really.

Sometimes, though, Rose would catch sight of him, in his brown or blue suits still. Even though the precise thing she was waiting for was for him to regenerate, Rose found she was still always sort of warmed to find that he hadn't changed bodies yet. She loved that body and that crazy set of quirks (not to mention that hair). She also wanted the Doctor to be able to live for as long as possible, even if part of that time was without her by his side. He might claim otherwise, but no matter how alone the Doctor might feel, he still lived his life to the fullest. He enjoyed the opportunities, even the parts that broke his hearts. Every minute he lived was worthwhile, and Rose didn't want him to be cheated of any more of that time than was absolutely necessary.  
Those times when she hadn't missed him, but instead had been able to successfully track him down, Rose would just hide away and watch. Or she'd find the TARDIS sitting patiently, waiting for him to return, and she'd join in on the wait. Once or twice, Rose had just barely managed to avoid him catching sight of her, but Rose knew that they'd only been close calls. She'd successfully stayed hidden. The Doctor might be a good actor, but he wasn't _that_ good. Also, unlike her, he had no reason to stay away from her if he suspected that she was alive.

Well, that was what she told herself. That reassurance to herself became just a little harder to believe in light of the few times she'd found the Doctor and he'd had River Song in tow, though.

It had hurt to think about it, but at least she'd long since been prepared for it.

She was even prepared for this moment, Rose thought, as the Doctor waved River off and went to do whatever it was he was up to this time. If Rose hadn't been made well aware of the complexities of the Doctor's and River's relationship ages ago, there would have been no way she could have considered putting her jealousy aside (as much as she could realistically do, at least) for this particular confrontation.

Rose followed River down the street, tailing her, but not quite bothering to shield her presence. She wasn't surprised when River seemed to stiffen, as if sensing that she was being watched.

River turned down a small side street, and Rose followed just far enough to be shielded from the sight of most of the people on the main street. She stopped. River herself had halted as well, just metres away from Rose, and was staring at her warily.

"You're following me," River remarked. "You're not very good at it."

"I wasn't exactly trying to hide," Rose returned.

Rose looked River over now, not quite smiling.

"I remembered you looking older," Rose noted. "A fair bit older, actually, but maybe that's just my memory indulging in some wishful thinking. Still, it's obviously fairly early days for you, isn't it? In your travelling with the Doctor, I mean." Rose studied River's face closely. "But I think ... Yes, I'm pretty sure that it's already happened for you, hasn't it?" she asked. "I can tell by your eyes. That sort of thing gives a person a different sort of look."

The eyes in question suddenly looked even more guarded. "I don't know what you're talking about," River said. Rose could tell just by that slight change in her expression that that was a lie.

"Yes, you do," Rose asserted, "which means it obviously _has_ happened."

"What would you know about it?" River asked. "I've never met you before."

"Oh, but you know that doesn't mean anything. Not when you travel through time." Rose shook her head self-deprecatingly. "You and me, we're two of a kind. In a lot of ways. We're both spending huge chunks of our lives making sure that the one thing we don't want to happen does happen, because it _has_ to. How rubbish is that?"

River narrowed her eyes at Rose. She said, "If you know about it, then you know you need to leave it alone. It's a fixed point in time."

"Oh, I know," Rose admitted. "Don't worry, I've seen enough to know I can't mess around with your timelines like that. I'm not going to take him away from you or anything."

"You couldn't if you tried," River said, confident. "He's ... he doesn't always make it obvious, but he wouldn't leave me."

"You'd be surprised," Rose said, matter-of-factly. She didn't mean to sound unkind, but she had to make a point. "Oh, he'd always answer your many distress calls, or whatever you prefer to call them, because he's that sort of a man. He couldn't help himself no matter what. But if I asked him, _really_ asked him, with him only knowing as little about you and the future as he does, not to let you travel with him, I think he'd agree to that. That's part of why I can't be with him right now. Sooner or later, I'd have asked. Or maybe I wouldn't even have needed to; for once, he might have got a clue and taken the initiative on his own. I couldn't risk that."

"You don't know him as well as you think, if you believe any of that," River said. Her absolute self-assurance seemed a little shaken, however.

"Like I said, we're two of a kind," Rose said, trying to smile slightly. "I've known him across lives — and across universes, for that matter. I've known him long enough to mourn him. And the same goes for him mourning me."

"Who are you?" River asked.

"My name's Rose Tyler."

River physically recoiled back a little, her eyes going almost frighteningly wide.

"Yeah," Rose said, this time managing a sad smile. "I thought you might have heard of me. Well, I hoped. You never can tell with the Doctor, even when he makes promises."

"You ..." River started, blinking. "You shouldn't _be_ here. He's not allowed to know that you're still alive."

"Oh," Rose said, surprised. "You already knew I was alive. You don't seem to have met me, though, because you didn't recognise me. That's ... very odd."

It was also somewhat promising, Rose realised. If River knew she was alive, then surely the Doctor would someday as well. Though the fact that she and River had never met was worrying. How could they have avoided it, if Rose would be back with the Doctor one day?

Surely, the Doctor wouldn't find out she was alive, when it was time, and just abandon her? Even all these years later for him, Rose couldn't quite believe that.

"You don't know everything, then, do you?" River said.

"No," Rose agreed. "Not everything. I didn't know just how brilliant you were at keeping secrets from the Doctor until just now, for instance. Which is good, really, because that means I can trust you to never tell him you met me here and now. You can't tell him any of this. Life with a time traveller; you know the drill."

"If he knew —"

"That's why you can't even hint at it," Rose interrupted. "It wouldn't be fair on him anymore than it would be fair on you. You two have a life to live still, and it includes more than one fixed point. It _has_ to happen."

River shook her head, still looking completely disbelieving. "Why are you telling me any of this? If you don't want me to do anything about it, what's the point?"

Rose shrugged. "It's not actually anything to do with me, if you can believe that. It's about you. And a little bit about him as well. I just ... look, you and me, we're never gonna be friends." River made a choked laughing sound, clearly in agreement. "But you mean something to the Doctor, and he would've appreciated this, I think. He would've wanted to say it himself, but he can't, so he'd have liked it if _someone_ could.

"I'm sorry that you had to do what you did. He would've forgiven you, if he could," Rose said. "He would have thanked you as well, if he'd known what sort of sacrifice you'd made for him. You were in prison, last time I spoke to you. He wouldn't have wanted that."

"That was you?" River breathed. "The phone call? You hung up when I told you who I was."

"Yeah," Rose admitted. "I couldn't risk you figuring that out. I didn't know at the time that you already knew I was alive, did I?"

"Why risk being so near to him just to tell me this, if you're so worried about upsetting the timelines?" River asked.

Rose would never admit that she'd actually already been nearby, because it would mean confessing the way she tagging after the Doctor, watching him, waiting for the right time. She couldn't tell that to River. Maybe not even to the Doctor, if she ever did get to speak to him again. It was a little too pathetic to abide them knowing. It was bad enough that Jack was aware of it, really. At least Jack knew what it was like to be constantly on the lookout for the right version of the Doctor.

Instead of saying any of that, then, Rose answered, "I'm here because he would've wanted you to know that you're forgiven, and you deserve for someone to say those things. You and I both know it can never be him."

Well, Rose _said_ that was the reason. What she meant was that she was telling River those things as consolation. She thought that that was better left unspoken, though.

River was silent for a long time. "He'll meet you again," she said.

Rose waved her off. "Don't tell me that! What's that thing you always say?" Rose asked. "Apart from 'Hello, sweetie', I mean. Nice touch, that. Oh, yeah. 'Spoilers'."

"I can tell you that much," River said, sounding just slightly indignant. "Don't treat me like an amateur. I'm an experienced time traveller. I've got an exceptional grasp of what can and can't be said."

Rose looked at River incredulously and then laughed. "I bet you drive him up the wall, don't you? I guess that's nice to know. That you're not his perfect woman, I mean. It's never good to feel like you're competing against some superhero."

"No," River said, looking intense. "It really isn't."

Rose looked away uncomfortably, not sure what she could possibly say to that.

River looked her over for a long time. "You were talking about how young I looked before, but you ... The way he talks about you ... I thought you'd be older. You're _so_ young. I can't believe he even took you away from home when you were that young."

"Come on now, River," Rose laughed bitterly. "You know that looks can be deceiving. Just look at the Doctor. He's as old as dirt, and will be a hell of a lot older still before the universe sees him gone, if I have anything to say about it."

River gave her a guilty look.

"Don't worry. I don't resent you." Then Rose rolled her eyes at her own implausible falsehood. "Oh, all right, maybe I do a little. I'm only human. But do me a favour? You look after him for me in the meantime, and we'll call it square."

"Call it square?" River asked, clearly confused by the 20th century phrase.

"Say we're even. Let it lie," Rose clarified.

"Yes," River said after a moment. "I can do that. If you do me a favour, as well. You tell Jack Harkness to not let you get yourself killed."

Rose could tell by the tone of River's voice that that was somehow vitally important.

Weren't they a pair. Both of them had way too much knowledge about the other. Both of them wanted almost all of the same things. Both of them were willing to go to crazy lengths to do what needed to be done.

Rose wished she could like River, actually. In other circumstances, she really might have. But no matter how many years she lived, Rose didn't think she'd ever quite shake that gut instinct towards jealousy. It was all she could do to be civil, and to attempt to tell River something comforting, rather than lashing out at her. Liking her really wasn't an option.

"Goodbye, River Song," Rose said tightly. "I'm sorry, for what it's worth."

As Rose walked away, she heard River say, "Rose Tyler," in a disbelieving sort of murmur. 

* * *

Rose wished that she could go and see Donna, but she knew she couldn't. If the Doctor did get back in contact with her (Rose wasn't certain whether he had yet or not, at this stage), there was no way that Donna would be able to keep Rose's continued existence a secret. She wasn't that good at lying.

So, instead of trying to approach her, Rose watched Donna from afar once. Just once.

That was when she'd found out that Donna was officially consulting for UNIT.

Rose had never had particularly warm and fluffy feelings for UNIT (she had, after all, worked for Torchwood for most of her life). But now that she was really aware just how far they were willing to go for the sake of doing their jobs, that once vague resentment of their existence had a proper and justified source. More than that, Rose still couldn't be sure that UNIT wasn't still attempting to track her down again.

Rose spent too much time searching for the Doctor (and sometimes even finding him) to allow them to use Donna to get near to her. After all, there was nothing to say that they weren't following Donna as well. They certainly had done it before.

Rose knew it was only the job she herself had helped Donna put together. She couldn't blame her for being involved with UNIT, especially since Donna had no knowledge what UNIT had done to Rose.

However, she couldn't hang around her, either, knowing the risks.

Rose bit her lip and forced herself to walk away.

* * *

Rose knew he (they) would be there. Not just the Doctor, but _him_. Her first Doctor. It hadn't just been two years since Rose had seen that particularly version of him. It had been centuries. She just wanted a glimpse of him, all worn leather and distinctive accent ("Lots of planets have a North.") and over-emphasised features. She couldn't just let that opportunity pass her by.

She was halfway through booking a plane ticket to Utah when she remembered that the two of them had never set foot outside that underground bunker. Even if she used her old Manipulator to deposit her directly inside the bunker, it would be impossible to watch the Doctor while remaining hidden. She'd end up causing a paradox or something for sure.

With her luck, she'd probably be killed by the Dalek.

Rose sighed and clicked her internet browser closed, running her hand over her face tiredly.

The waiting was driving her a little bit nuts, no doubt about it. 

* * *

It was times like this that Rose really wished that she carried her Vortex Manipulator device with her at all times. She could do with a quick teleportation out of there about now.

Somehow, Rose didn't believe she'd live through a shot of those high-tech guns the aliens were pointing at her. Not if the blasts were well-placed, and it really was kind of hard to miss a still target from just metres away. Rose would be dead long before her body could start high-speed healing her.

The aliens stood there, lined up like a firing squad, and Rose wondered if it was possible to brace herself for a gunshot wound. Could you ever really be prepared for that sort of thing? For death, even?

She'd known there was a chance that she wouldn't live long enough to find the Doctor at a point at which she could finally rejoin him, if he wanted that. She'd known that, and yet after nearly half a millennium of just constantly living on, death for her still had seemed like such an unlikely concept.

Not right now it didn't, though.

"Hey!" Rose heard a deep voice call out from the other side of the veritable barricade of aliens.

That was the point at which the aliens swung around in the opposite direction, their guns abruptly aimed away from Rose, and started firing. Not one to miss an opportunity, Rose bolted, darting about sporadically as she ran to make herself into a more difficult target.

Rose had preferred the running when there was a hand in hers, but this still caused that same sort of adrenaline rush. She felt sorry for whoever (or whatever) the aliens had just attacked in her place, but Rose still couldn't help but feel the excitement of the running as well.

It was better than nothing. She still wasn't interested in working for Torchwood (or, even worse, _UNIT_), but she liked helping out where she could.

She did prefer it when she wasn't quite _that_ close to getting killed for her troubles, but still.

Her phone rang.

"Not now, Jack," Rose said hurriedly into the phone and hung up, shoving it into her pocket without breaking her stride.

Rose twirled on the spot so she could catch a glimpse of the scene behind her. She didn't appear to be being followed.

She ducked behind a building as her phone rang again.

"I'm kind of busy," Rose said into the speaker.

"Some thanks I get for saving your life," Jack said, the joking tone in his voice obvious.

"That was you!" Rose exclaimed. "You idiot. Did you get yourself killed _again_?"

"Better me than you," Jack said seriously. "Gave them a hell of a shock when I got right back up and ran for it, I'll tell you that much."

"How did you know I was in trouble?"

"I didn't," Jack admitted. "Just lucky."

"Yeah, lucky," Rose said. "Personally I call a day where I don't get shot by angry aliens a waste, me."

Jack chuckled. "You know what I meant. I was actually looking for you for a completely different reason."

"What's that?" Rose asked.

"He's here as well."

Rose frowned. "What? Jack, I know you've got a decent grip on the English language. Use it."

"The Doctor," Jack elaborated, and Rose sucked in a sharp breath. "He's here, dealing with the same aliens we are. I thought I'd better give you a heads up so you can get your stunning little ass over there now."

Rose swore, ignoring the flirtation. "I can't go near him. Oh, but I can't just leave, either. I'm kind of in the middle of this. Damn him and his timing."

"Rose, there's something else. It was Gwen that told me. She rang and said it was some guy she's never seen before that was claiming to be the Doctor."

Rose tried to reply, but no words came out. She hung up, placing the phone much more slowly inside her pocket this time, worrying she'd simply drop it in her state of shock if she wasn't careful.

A different man.

_Finally_.

Rose pulled her gun out from behind her back and regrouped.

Right, then. The aliens had just better hurry up and get out of the way. Rose had places to be. 

* * *

Rose had just pulled a woman and her young son out of the street away from one of the aliens when the alien in question seemed to stop, as if receiving a message, and then promptly pulled out a device and disappeared.

Rose stared after it, momentarily confused. Their troops had clearly been winning. Why retreat?

But then, of course, the answer was obvious.

The Doctor.

Rose grinned, properly, for the first time in ages.

She ran off back in the direction where the majority of the action had taken place. That was where he'd be. The centre of the disturbance was where he always was, even on the rare occasion when he wasn't the one causing most of the trouble to begin with.

It took her a few minutes, but eventually she found it. There. Rose practically skidded to a halt.

The TARDIS.

Rose almost looked straight past the man walking towards the TARDIS at first. Then she peered more closely at him, her attention caught by something about his walk.

His swagger, more like. Rose smiled.

He was dressed like an old man; that was unexpected, and was therefore part of the reason why Rose had overlooked him. The other part was that Rose had never seen him in that particular body. Which made it his eleventh; she'd seen the other two later bodies in her travels between parallels, and she'd seen drawings of all of his earlier bodies.

Still, even though she didn't actually _recognise_ him, there was something so familiar about him. He was also clearly headed straight for the blue police box, looking like a man with a purpose, which was the clincher.

Of course it was him.

This was it. This was the version of the Doctor that Rose had been waiting for.

"Doctor!" Rose called, her voice breaking slightly.

The Doctor's head jerked towards the origin of the sound, expression puzzled. Then all emotion other than plain and honest shock fell away.

She didn't hear him say her name, but she recognised the shape of it on his lips.

"Doctor," Rose said again, laughing softly to herself in relief. Oh, _finally_.

The Doctor walked towards her, still looking completely stunned. When he reached her side, he reached out slowly for her, as if she was about to disappear. One hand reached her face and he inhaled sharply as skin met skin. His other hand came up to mirror the first. The Doctor cupped her cheeks and ran his thumbs over her features as if making certain his other senses confirmed that he was seeing exactly what he thought he was seeing.

"Rose," he whispered. His voice was different. The way he said her name really wasn't.

"Hi," she said softly, still sort of laughing. "Nice bowtie."

Then he was kissing her, his hands dragging her face to his and holding it there. His tongue delved into her mouth before he'd even quite figured out how to line up his new mouth against hers.

They'd become so used to kissing in his old body that it took a few moments to unlearn the perfect tilt of heads and bodies to account for their new respective heights and shapes. Thorough exploration was underrated, though, and the Doctor had always been an incredibly fast learner.

If nothing else, Rose was pleased that he clearly hadn't been off practising his snogging skills in this body with someone else. For that, she'd gladly spend a few awkward moments letting him figure himself out.

Once he had, he wasn't at all shy about showing her just how quickly he was picking it all up.

Rose brought her arms up around his back, running them up to his shoulders and back. The Doctor moved one hand up into her hair and clenched it there almost painfully.

His teeth took hold of her lower lip more gently than she'd expected based on the roughness of his other actions. He sucked that lip into his mouth and ran his tongue over it, slow and thorough. Rose shivered.

Then somehow he'd used his other hand — when had it stopped cupping her cheek? — to pull her leg around his waist. The feeling of his hand running up and down her jean-clad thigh was so sensuous that Rose thought she might as well have not been wearing pants at all, for how little of a barrier they provided between them. They might as well as been skin-to-skin.

She angled against him at the thought.

Then the Doctor swung them around, her leg still around him, and backed her into the outside of the TARDIS. Rose had certainly had more comfortable things pressing into her before, but she didn't complain. His new body that she hadn't yet had a chance to learn was lined up against hers, his front pressing her firmly into the wood at her back. She could feel how hard he was, and she writhed purposely against him, pushing him to deepen their kissing.

For a weird moment Rose wondered whether the perception filter extended further around the TARDIS than just the wooden walls of the box itself, because it seemed like they just might be about to have sex up against the side of the ship, out in the open air where any casual passers-by could watch them.

Granted, with the Rift and the constant alien activity, the people of Cardiff had all likely seen and promptly ignored much weirder things than a couple frantically ... well, _coupling_, in public. Jack would certainly enjoy the view if he managed to track Rose down about now.

The Doctor broke contact with Rose's lips, though he never quite lost the connection between other parts of their bodies, so that he could pull her inside the TARDIS with him. Within seconds, she was pressed to the floor of the console room. It was only mildly more comfortable than the outside of the TARDIS, but at least it was a much more horizontal surface. She had a moment to wonder why she was lying on what felt like cold glass instead of biting metal grating. That moment was just long enough to then take in the fact that the TARDIS actually looked even more different to how she remembered it than the Doctor himself did. Then the Doctor himself was once more right there in front of her eyes, blocking her view of the room.

Tweed, Rose noted with exasperation. Well, she figured the best way to get rid of the offending item was by pulling it off him with the greatest possible alacrity and throwing it clear across the console room. As statements went, though, Rose feared her silent point about really preferring to never see that coat again might have been lost in the Doctor's haste to help her undress him.

With the impediment of the coat gone, the Doctor slipped his suspenders (which reminded Rose somewhat disconcertingly of Jack) off his shoulders so that he could take his pants off. Rose took a second to smile over the ridiculousness of the outfit.

He looked so different, his clothing included. Again. That wasn't something you just got used to with practice.

Even though it wasn't him, exactly — not either of the Doctors that Rose remembered so well — it also really _was_. She knew that. He was the same in so many key ways. The little things could wait for the moment. She'd have time to figure those things out eventually, if she was very, very lucky.

Kicking off his trousers and shoes, and completely ignoring the fact that he was still wearing his shirt, the Doctor leaned down onto his knees so he could run a hand slowly down Rose's body. He curled his hand from the middle of her abdomen around to her hip, gripping the curve of it softly before slipping his hand back across to the top of her thigh and inward. He flipped the button of her pants open deftly and pulled the zip down, all with just one hand. The hand that had been pressed off to the side of Rose's head, steadying his weight against the ground, then joined the other to yank Rose's trousers and underwear almost viciously off her. Rose was surprised the material didn't rip under the strain.

She helped by leaning the top half of herself upwards, the muscles in her abdomen straining, so that she could pull her shirt off and toss it somewhere behind her, probably dangling off one of the console levers. Presuming this version of the console still had levers. She hoped so. She'd liked the levers.

The Doctor pushed Rose back down flat before she could deal with her bra, the skin of her back pimpling at the cold of the floor. He smiled at her in self-satisfaction, running a hand over the outer curve of her bum.

The last time she'd done this with the Doctor, and every time before that, he had always been just a little hesitant, as if he was always unsure whether it was quite all right that they were doing it. This version of him was anything but diffident about it. He was strangely forceful, really. She'd liked doing this with him before, of course, but she thought she could come to really love this different approach as well.

A hand cupped her intimately and Rose arched up into him.

"You feel just the same," the Doctor breathed.

"So do you," Rose assured him. In a way, it really was true. The details may have changed, like the length of his fingers and the texture of his palm, but the way his hands felt on her was still somehow so very familiar.

"Let me ..." the Doctor trailed off, his fingers searching for and finding new and interesting places.

"Yes," Rose murmured. "Anything you want."

He pulled her right leg over his shoulder and shuffled forward so that her knee met her shoulder. His eyes were abruptly close enough for her to see her own reflection in the black of them. They both paused, her hot breath mingling with his cooler exhalations.

His eyes weren't quite the same colour as she'd grown used to (which, in turn, hadn't been quite the same as the luminescent blue she'd first known). Behind the surface details, though, she could see the Doctor. That look that said he'd lived a thousand years and done both terrible and wonderful things was right there, where it should be.

Then he guided himself into her and she lost sight of those eyes, her own eyes snapping shut of their own accord.

It took him a bit to find his feet, so to speak. It was a relatively new body to him, after all, and Rose knew that whatever else had happened while they'd been apart this time, this had to be the first time he'd broken it in this way. It _had_ to be. She wouldn't even consider otherwise.

Between the two of them, though, they both managed to bring themselves and each other to climax, with Rose taking just a little longer to get there. Rose's head met the floor a bit too hard as her body curled back in response to reaching her peak. She moaned in something other than pleasure, then. The Doctor, who'd already had a minute to catch his breath and recover, shifted his weight onto one elbow so he could bring his other hand up to support her head reverently.

"You all right?" he asked huskily.

"Yeah. Ow. Also, what was that?"

"Um ..."

"Oh, don't be so literal," Rose said irreverently. "I know what that was. It hasn't been _that_ long for me."

"It has for me," the Doctor admitted.

Good, she thought.

What she said instead was, "I'm sorry. But that's sort of what I meant. Where'd you learn to be all ... forceful like that?"

The Doctor chuckled. "Remind me to tell you about Amy Pond one day."

Rose jerked upwards, then, nearly catching him in the chin with her elbow. "Do you always have sex with someone and then go on talking about other women straight after?" she asked, trying to keep her anger reigned in. Bad enough that they were going to have to talk about one other woman in particular soon enough, but if he was going to suggest that he'd been with others as well ...

The Doctor looked up at her seriously. "You're the only one who's been in the position to know the answer to that for ... I don't even know how long. Centuries, at least. Amy was a friend. _Just_ a friend. She's married now."

Rose rolled her eyes at him, settling back down on the ground. "Well. As reassurances go, that's hardly the worst one you've used," she admitted grudgingly.

The Doctor rolled onto his side, then, curling into her more comfortably. Rose shifted so that her hand was resting on top of his now-rumpled shirt, approximately over his right heart, her fingers tracing one of his buttons absently. She glanced around the room.

"I hope the fact that you just went all caveman and decided sex in the console room was a good idea means that you don't have anyone else tucked away in the TARDIS at the moment?" Rose asked. "Like, say, someone who could walk in on us at any moment."

"Just us," the Doctor confirmed. The way he said that made Rose think that he wouldn't have had it any other way.

That really was saying something, considering that the Doctor had made it clear in the past that he usually thought the more the merrier.

The Doctor reached up and played with a strand of Rose's hair.

"You're ginger," he commented, smiling.

"You're still not," Rose countered. "Jealous?"

"Immensely," he admitted. The Doctor looked down at the play of her hand over the material of his shirt. "I take it you don't mind my new look, though? Lack of ginger hair aside."

Rose rolled her eyes at him before resting her head against the other side of his chest.

"I could do with less tweed," she admitted.

"I love that coat," he replied petulantly.

"Oh, relax," Rose mumbled. "I'm not going to tear it off your body or anything. Well," she added thoughtfully, remembering how the object in question had made its way across the console room, "not permanently, at least."

The Doctor was quiet for a while. "Are you sure? I had a fez once," he said, his voice sort of longing. "That got taken from me. It was cool."

Rose snorted. "A fez? Oh, honestly. Well, that's _something_ to be thankful to River for, I guess."

The Doctor froze underneath her hand, not even drawing breath for that long moment. He pushed Rose away so that he could look properly at her face.

"What makes you think it had anything to do with River?" he asked.

Rose snorted and said, "I'm not stupid, Doctor. Who else could have got you to change your mind about something like that once you were set on it?"

"Rose ..." the Doctor began.

Rose pulled away fully, then. "I'm going to get dressed," she announced, her voice suddenly coming out a little higher than usual.

She wasn't making excuses to put the topic off just a bit longer. Oh, no. Not her.

No, she just really thought she'd like to have some clothing on while they discussed the Doctor's _other_ girlfriend. 

* * *

By the time Rose had grabbed clothing out of the wardrobe room and got dressed (and spent a bit more time affectionately stroking the walls of the TARDIS than she would ever admit to), the Doctor had redressed himself and was standing waiting for her in the console room. He looked more awkward than she'd ever seen him.

Rose had been prepared to stay strong and explain herself calmly, and then cross her arms and hear him out.

She thought she'd been prepared, at least.

She saw the Doctor hovering there, unsure where to put his hands, looking as if he needed something to fill them. She couldn't just stand across the room and have some logical discussion with him looking at her like that.

The Doctor caught her when she crossed the room, his arms holding onto her so tightly that she found it slightly difficult to breathe.

Maybe the shortness of breath was due to the sudden bout of crying, actually.

"I'm so sorry," she sobbed softly into his tweed coat, which was too rough against her cheek but felt somehow more tangible against her because of it. It wasn't that the tweed was growing on her or anything, but Rose really needed that sense of him being right there with her, completely touchable. Present and _real_.

"It's all right," the Doctor comforted her, despite not quite yet understanding exactly what he was forgiving. It was a free pass, given just because he was the Doctor, and she was Rose Tyler, and they both wanted it.

As much as Rose might want just that, though, what she _needed_ was for him to forgive her with full knowledge of everything that had happened, and all of the secrets she had kept from him.

"No," she therefore denied. "It's not. Not yet. I have to explain. I'm sorry. I really am. But it _had_ to happen that way. The alternative was ... not an alternative at all, really."

The Doctor was quiet for a long time, just holding her.

"Tell me," he finally said, pulling his head away just enough that he could actually look at her. "How?"

"How did I live?" Rose asked. The Doctor nodded. "I ... the day I came back, you came up with a theory for why I didn't get any older, and I let you believe it. It was easier, and I'm sorry. It wasn't trans-whatsit energy that bound itself to my cells. It's traces of the Time Vortex. Bad Wolf."

The Doctor jerked back from her completely, then, looking like she'd stung him. "No!" he denied. "No, shut up, let me think." Rose raised an eyebrow at his abruptness. Still not ginger, and still obviously rude. "I took that energy out of you. Even if I hadn't, the only way it could have made you live longer instead of killing you should have been to make you completely immortal so it _couldn't_ kill you, and that's not it. It's not. I know what that feels like; not like this."

"It's just tiny traces," Rose said, feeling inexplicably calmer now that his speech was getting all sort of rapid-fire and emotional, not so very differently to how it used to in his last body. It was just somehow easier to talk about this sort of thing when he wasn't acting as if nothing could touch him. "It's all right," she assured him. "It hasn't made me immortal like Jack, or hurt me, or anything. Just changed me a little. I didn't think it would have saved me from that radiation, actually. Turns out the changes were a bit more radical than I'd realised up until then."

The Doctor's face became pained. It looked different on these new features, but the sentiment was the same as always.

Rose really wished that she wasn't in a position to so easily recognise the Doctor's anguish.

"You didn't know it would save you," he said. "You did that, without knowing. _Rose_."

"No," Rose admitted. "I didn't know. I didn't care, though. It would have been worth it. I'd seen too much of your future to let you die then."

"Oh," he said, drawing the syllable out until it seemed to gain far too much meaning to be comfortable for either of them. "No. Wait. I missed it. Yes. Oh, Rose, I'm sorry. I'm such an idiot. You said it all the way back then, didn't you? That last time you and I faced the Daleks. Blurring of time, you said, and I didn't really listen. _Need_ to learn to listen! You described time in flux, and I was being all Time Lordy and superior, of course, so I couldn't believe that you, with your tiny human brain, could possibly see or sense that. I just thought you were telling me what I wanted to hear so I wouldn't be worried about you changing the past. Basically, I just let it go because I chose to trust you despite the fact that I wasn't sure — really, absolutely _sure_ — that you knew what you were doing. But I never thought you might actually _know_. Not like that. Not like I do."

He looked at her sort of pityingly. She immediately wished he would stop that.

"You've seen more than that as well, though, haven't you?"

Rose nodded. "It's just flashes of memory."

"From the Bad Wolf," he said, more as a statement than a question. "Oh, I'm so very sorry. You've had the Time Vortex in your mind, and some of that's gone and clung on. Left over," he reasoned. "Slightly different perceptions of events and flashes back to things you saw when you were the Bad Wolf. Possibilities of time, playing out in your head, but not in enough detail to make complete sense, am I right?"

"Yeah," Rose said. "I think so. It was just a few times, back in that parallel universe, as if I'd already somehow seen that I'd end up back here in this one. It gave me hope, you know. I'd been there so long, without anyone. I needed that."

"I think you saw that you would need that, back then," the Doctor agreed. "It's all completely timey wimey, of course, but it's the obvious explanation. As the Bad Wolf, you saw that you'd need it. And even though you never remembered it, you left yourself a few parting gifts to lead yourself back here, where you wanted to be. It's ingenious. Completely wrong, of course, playing with the fabric of reality like that, even if you were all-knowing and all-powerful and not really _you_ at the time. But still. Very smart."

Rose snorted. "Would've been smarter to prevent myself from falling in the first place, you'd think," she said.

The Doctor shook his head. "I think you probably understand fixed events much better now, by the sounds of it. That was one. I saw it coming — not in detail, of course, but all that dodgy foreboding was definitely there, even if I wanted to ignore it for as long as possible. You had to leave me then. There were things that would never have happened if you'd still been with me, otherwise. I'd never have met Donna Noble if I hadn't burned up a sun to say goodbye to you. Just for example."

Rose sighed. "Yeah. I know all about that sort of thing now. Figures. My whole life seems to be determined by fixed events. I've seen other ones, you know. Stumbled across them, or sought them out sometimes, when I was jumping around between universes and looking for the right point in time to intercept you."

"What did you see?" the Doctor asked.

"I can't tell you that," Rose said quickly. "Not the things you haven't already lived through, anyway. Not details."

The Doctor frowned, "I'm a Time Lord. I'm the only one left to be in charge of these things. If anyone needs to know, it's me."

Rose shook her head stubbornly. "No," she said. "All I can say is that sometimes I see something happening and know that it _has_ to be. It looks completely set to me. On the other hand, even though I figure that most things are usually all in motion, I can only really see it in the times that can significantly change the course of the universe. At least, I _think_ that's why I see the shifting of those moments in particular. When that happens, everything sort of looks out of focus until a path is chosen and it settles. Most of the time that's all I see."

"Time in flux, like I said. Yes. I'm serious, Rose," the Doctor said. "You shouldn't have kept this from me. You had no right. Not when it's about time and potential paradoxes and fixed events. It wasn't up to you to decide how much I needed to know."

"How long has it been for you?" Rose asked. "Seventy years? Eighty? You'd have died — really, properly, no-regenerations-left _died_ — decades ago if it wasn't for me. You would have run through three more regenerations and then been gone for good just eight years after I'd left you. You'd burned yourself out in your tenth body, Doctor, and I watched how you never really recovered. I _watched_ that running through my head!"

"I'm on my eleventh life," the Doctor said. "I only get thirteen. For all you know, I could still run through the rest in just the next few years, or even months."

"Then that time will still be on top of decades you never would have had otherwise!" Rose shot back.

He sounded like he was putting in endless amounts of effort to sound understanding when he said, "Rose, you of all people should know that a longer life isn't always a better one."

Rose glared at him. "And _you_ should know that it's not always about just you. You know, you never even asked how I knew what the heck a Z-Neutrino biological inversion catalyser was. It wasn't in Torchwood's files. I never told Jack about it. Just said I'd killed the Daleks, nothing more. You really want to know everything that I know? I could tell you about _that_."

"Yes," the Doctor said.

"You won't like it," Rose warned.

"Tell me," he insisted anyway.

"Fine," Rose spat. "There was a possibility that never should have been, and I got flashes of it, remembering seeing it when I was the Bad Wolf. Instead of jumping onto that bus on Midnight, I went straight to Earth once the planets had been moved by the Daleks. You and I found each other on the streets and a Dalek shot you. You didn't regenerate. Instead, you poured regeneration energy into that hand you had hacked off after your last regeneration. That created a biological metacrisis when Donna touched the hand. A half-human half-Time Lord Doctor. And Donna Noble with a Time Lord brain."

The Doctor physically recoiled slightly from the very idea of it. "That's not possible. She'd have died."

Rose nodded. "Starting to get the gravity of it all now, are you? You would have had to wipe her memories of you and everything she did that involved you. Everything that made her realise how brilliant she was, Doctor. She cried and begged and you _still did that_."

"I'm sorry you had to see that. So very sorry," the Doctor said, his voice sounding much gentler.

Rose laughed bitterly. "Oh, no. That's still not the worst of it by far. 'Cause there was still that other Doctor with his one heart and his human lifespan. And there was me."

"I didn't ... I didn't send you ..." the Doctor started, clearly looking for her to deny it.

Rose hated to do this to him, but he had to understand. She needed him to understand.

"Of course you did," Rose said. "Everything was so rushed that you'd never even _asked_ me about my time in the other universe. You didn't know enough to make decisions for me. You told me I should take him and have a life with him, and you never stopped to question whether that was possible. And I saw how that version of me thought it meant you didn't want me, so I — she — whatever — went right along with it."

"You'd have watched it happening; him growing old and dying while you remained," the Doctor said sadly, comprehending.

"Yeah," Rose said shortly. "You know what was worse, though? You thought I still belonged in the 21st century, of course, so that's exactly where you'd have dropped us off. Only, there was already a Rose Tyler in the 21st century. And the 22nd. And all the way up to the 25th. I didn't exactly see the lifetimes play out in front of my eyes like some sort of film reel, Doctor, but the flashes were enough. I would have had to go into hiding to avoid a paradox. _So_ deep into hiding. For hundreds of years, until that other Rose finally jumped universes. And he ... That other Doctor, he could have gone off and travelled the stars or whatever on his own, probably. He could have had some sort of a life. But he'd have chosen to stay with me. You know he would have, because you were him in every way that mattered. And you also know how that would have driven him mad, in the end. Separated from the stars and his home, and having to stay so still to avoid discovery, and having to see me go through the same thing he'd always feared living through himself. That human life that you could never live could never have been fair consolation for losing the TARDIS, and he'd have ended up hating himself even more than you do now. I know it didn't really happen, but I still watched him grow old, and I held his hand as he died, and he couldn't even be properly sad for himself because he was too busy constantly worrying about me. Because he knew first-hand exactly what I was going through. I saw that part clearly enough. Too clearly."

"I'm sorry," he said again. "I'm so sorry. But that really was just one possibility, in the entire universe of possibilities. It wouldn't necessarily have happened that way."

Rose shook her head. "I don't think so. There weren't a lot of ways the thing with the Daleks could have gone, you know. At least, not ways that didn't end in the destruction of the universe on the Daleks' whim."

There was dawning comprehension in the Doctor's eyes. "You wouldn't have been the one to kill them if that timeline had played out, would you?"

"No," Rose agreed.

"You only did that to prevent all of those things from happening."

"Yeah," Rose said.

"Then what ..."

Rose gave him a pointed look, and the Doctor looked away guiltily.

"I did it to stop a good man from having to do it himself," Rose said after a while. "And you know that I wish I hadn't had to do it. I really do. But I'd still do it again in a heartbeat, to stop all of that from happening, and stop him from having to."

There was silence for a long while as they both let that sink in.

"But Rose," the Doctor said, with just a hint of underlying pain creeping into his voice, "that doesn't change the fact that you should have _told_ me about all of this."

"What would you have done if I'd told you all of that?" Rose asked.

"I'd have managed. I've met people who know _so much_ about me. About my future. So much that I could read their minds like books and map out the rest of my life if I chose. But I don't. I deal with it. It's a hazard of an occupation I've been at for longer than even you've been alive. I know what I'm doing. You don't. I could have handled some details."

Rose shook her head, exasperated. "I knew a future that should never happen, and which I could still prevent without causing a paradox. Are you really going to tell me that was wrong?"

"And is that what happened when you decided to go and kill yourself, as well?" the Doctor asked, sounding like he was at his breaking point just bringing that particular topic up again. "You thought you could change something?"

"No," Rose said. "I thought ... I'd seen it in my travels. You were without me in your future, and you still had that same body, so you hadn't regenerated either. There were things that happened that you had to do without me, even. That's the way it _had_ to be. And, well, I thought that was it. That that moment was why. I just assumed I must have died by the time I saw you off without me, because I couldn't imagine any other reason we wouldn't be together. I figured I'd finally found out how and when it happened, and that I was living through it."

The Doctor hid his face in his hand. Rose couldn't figure out whether that flimsy barrier concealed an expression of fury or deep sadness or what. She needed to see his face. Even when he closed off his expression, Rose could tell so much from just a glimpse of him. His newer face was barely harder to read than either of the other two she'd known intimately. Not for her.

He suddenly lashed out, and Rose could see it was a combination of emotions that he'd been hiding. "You knew!" he accused. "You'd jumped around looking at my future, and you were lying to me about why you'd lived so long, and all that time you believed you were going to die soon. You let me think everything was fine. I thought there was a possibility that the effects would wear off eventually and that you might grow old after all, but I'd hoped ... It could have taken centuries to happen. _Centuries_. For once, I just hoped instead of being rational. So I thought that maybe it was finally _right_, the two of us. You were going to live longer, and you could be with me. You let me believe we could finally have a life together!"

He was a different man now, but his voice apparently still half-broke when he was really emotional in a similar way to how it had done in his last body. It cracked towards the end of that last sentence, and Rose felt like she was the one shattering as a result.

Rose remembered the Master, saying something about the Doctor becoming more attached to her because she might be the one who could finally stay with him. Damn that bastard for being so right about something, mixed up in all that taunting. It was the grain of harsh truth that just served to make the cuts sting all the more.

She'd hurt the Doctor so much. She could hear it in his voice.

She'd still do it again, though, if she'd had to.

"I'm sorry," Rose said. The two of them seemed to be apologising a lot. Well, there was a lot to be sorry for. Nevertheless, this particular apology wasn't quite completely sincere like the others had been. She wasn't sorry. Not really. If she'd been properly sorry about doing it, that would have implied she'd be willing to take it back.

She never could have.

"Why didn't you tell me?" the Doctor said. "Why not tell me you were alive?"

"I tried," Rose said softly. "I really did try. I rang you, and the call was just diverted. I even found you on Earth, but so much time had already passed for you. I couldn't ..."

"You _could_ have," the Doctor insisted.

"You had to live that life."

"Not without you, I didn't," the Doctor denied.

"Tell me then, Doctor. Tell me that you haven't lived as brilliantly as you ever have these last years without me," Rose challenged. "You've saved worlds, and helped the helpless, and fallen in love —"

The Doctor flinched. "Rose ..."

"No, it's all right," Rose said. "I know so much about you. Of course I know about you and River. I've always known about you and River. Well, not when I first met you in that shop basement, obviously, but before I ever showed up on that bus on Midnight, I knew. I even knew when you were heading off to see her while you were still with me. You think I'm a bad liar? I'm brilliant compared to you. You couldn't have made me more suspicious if you'd tried, sneaking off to the other woman."

"No. She's not 'the other woman'," the Doctor said vehemently, "Whatever you're thinking, Rose, stop it. I swear it's not like that. River and I aren't together now, and we definitely weren't back then. After you ..."

This time Rose was sincere. "I'm sorry that I hurt you enough that you couldn't be happy with someone else." Well, she was at least partly sincere. There was still a part of her that couldn't stand the idea of the Doctor and River ever having that deeper relationship.

Rose had seen that potential, too, though she'd never consider telling him that part.

In another world of possibility, the Doctor would have been married to River Song for three years of those eight that he'd lived. After suddenly becoming so completely alone, with Donna gone and Rose out of reach and all of his other companions leaving him behind to lead their own lives, he would have thrown himself into that relationship headlong. Rose was almost sorry to have changed that, for both their sakes. Not sorry enough to want to take back the choices she'd made, though. Not really.

"It wasn't about being hurt," the Doctor said. In both the past incarnations of him she'd known, he would have sounded annoyed with her just for suggesting it, but in this body he just sounded strangely forthright. "That wasn't it at all. It was because ... Well, how could I go off with another woman like that when I'm still so in love with _you_?"

Rose noted with surprise how easily the word 'love' slid across the Doctor's tongue. It wasn't like a grand profession. No, much like the only other time he'd ever said it aloud to her, when she'd been stuck in that glass chamber, it was said just like it was an established fact. As if it was something that she should already know, which shouldn't even be in question enough to ever have to be made into a some kind of ostentatious statement.

Rose supposed she did know it. She'd known for as long as she could remember, even though she'd been almost positive that he'd never actually admit it.

Still, obvious fact or not, she knew it didn't mean that he loved her _exclusively_. Emotions were much harder than actions to control, after all.

Rose vaguely remembered being in her late teens and arguing with her best friend at the time — she'd long since forgotten the girl's name in the intervening years — about whether it was possible to love two people at once. At the time, Rose had still been naive enough to think that you loved one person absolutely, and that was it. Recognition of shades of grey came much later, when she'd realised that no matter how much she loved the Doctor, Mickey Smith — that boy from the Estates who'd loved her and just wanted a normal life with her — would still always hold a place in her heart.

Now, with the benefit of centuries of experiencing life and witnessing relationships both form and dissolve, Rose saw in the Doctor a man with double the emotion in those two hearts. He had a love for the entire universe (even the parts that by all rights he really ought to hate). She thought that loving two women at once wasn't exactly a stretch for a man like that.

She wished it could be otherwise, of course. But she couldn't quite bring herself to really blame him. No more than she blamed herself, at least.

Hoping to convey this reasoning, she said, "Doctor, that doesn't mean that you can't love her, too. She's been in and out of your life for years. Of course you love her."

"I ... I feel something for everyone who travels with me, in a way," he admitted. "That doesn't mean they compare to you. Not that way."

"It's okay," Rose said. "You thought I was dead. I could have told you about twenty-five years after you thought I'd died that I was still alive. I didn't, because of what I know about you, and about her. There's something fixed, in your future, that couldn't happen if you hadn't spent all that time with River, and become that close to her."

The Doctor glowered. "You know, right now I really hate the Time Vortex. It keeps giving you these stupid ideas, and then you go and listen to them, and you don't tell me any of the things that are important, and seventy years go by where I think you're dead because of it. Not particularly liking that, I'll tell you now."

"You don't hate it," Rose said, her voice certain. "If it weren't for the traces in me, I wouldn't be here right now. I'd probably have never lived to make it back across to this side of the void, for one thing, but I definitely wouldn't have lived through that dose of radiation."

"Yes, and that's another thing," the Doctor said, grabbing Rose firmly by the chin. "Don't you ever try to get yourself killed to protect me again."

He pressed his lips to hers and explored her mouth with his tongue, as if trying to re-learn her in a single attempt, as if earlier hadn't been anywhere near enough to satisfy him.

She thought she really should be the one trying to learn him, actually, considering he was the one who'd changed. Then again, it had been seventy or so years for him since he'd last been able to kiss her. It had only been three years for Rose since she'd kissed him, albeit a slightly different him.

It was an interesting role reversal, being the one for whom very little time had passed this go around. She didn't know whether she preferred it or not.

Rose pulled away from the Doctor just slightly enough to whisper into his mouth, "I'll promise not to risk myself for you if you promise the same."

The Doctor said nothing to that for a long time, just as Rose had expected. There was no way either of them was going to let the other go off into mortal danger without trying to do something about it. That was the way it _should_ be, whatever the Doctor might think.

"I can't," he said finally. "You know I can't. But I still need you to promise me, even though I can't promise the same, because I don't think I can do that again. I can't be with you again, and then lose you."

"If you don't want to do this ..." Rose started, and it nearly killed her to get out the words. "You and me. If you don't want me to stay, if you can't handle that, you have to tell me now. Or, well ... if you want to stay with River ..."

"What?" the Doctor asked harshly. "What then? You'll wave me on my way and be _happy_ for me?"

"Of course not," Rose snapped. "I'll be miserable. But I'll live with it, and that's the important thing. If you break my heart ... well, that sucks, and damn you. But damn me even more for deciding that the stupid timelines were more important than telling you I was still alive in the first place. I can't exactly blame you when it's my own fault, can I?"

"I'm not choosing River," the Doctor said quietly. "I could never, even if you hadn't come back. I do ... I _feel_ for her, you're right, but how could I ..."

Rose took the Doctor's face — his new but somehow still familiar face — in her hands. "I need you to tell _her_ that. You don't have to tell her you're choosing me, or whatever. I don't even ... _are_ you choosing me? Or are you just —"

She found herself kissing him again. This new Doctor seemed even fonder of doing that than the last version. That was a bit surprising, considering the massive oral fixation he'd had then.

"Rose," the Doctor breathed a minute later. "It was never even a choice. Or, if it ever was, the choice was made a long time ago. I've been yours since you swung on a chain and saved me from Autons. You know me. I was far too ridiculously stubborn to admit it then. But it's still true, even if I wouldn't have said it. Why do you think I asked you twice?"

Oh. Well that was ... Oh.

"Your communication skills sucked back then," Rose said, trying to sound flip.

"Yes," he agreed simply. "They did."

"But not anymore? Now you're gonna tell me the important stuff, not just demand that I tell _you_ everything?"

The Doctor smiled deprecatingly. He said, "I told you that I love you. I told you that you _own_ me, against all of my better judgment. You make me completely irrational. I can't even think properly around you anymore. And I'm a Time Lord, with a very high capacity for thinking, so that's saying something. I'm never sure whether to be angry with you, or to cry with you, or to grin like a madman every time I catch just a glimpse of you, or to just skip all of that and kiss the breath right out of you. And I'm not sure there's much left to say after all that, really, but if that doesn't about cover it, I swear that somehow I'll see what I can do about finding some more 'important stuff' to tell you."

The Doctor went to lean in again, but as much as Rose really wanted to kiss him after that speech — she wished she'd had an audio recorder for that — she still rested a hand on his chest and held him back.

"No," Rose said. "Later. I appreciate the sentiments, really I do. And I love you, too. You know that. But right now, I think you're trying to avoid doing the other things you have to do. It's probably been days at least since you've seen her; I'm sure River probably needs her life saved again about now. And then you can tell her, if that's definitely what you've decided."

"I ..." the Doctor began. He stalled for a moment, looking sad. "You know, most of the times I've seen her recently, she's been ... as old as I've ever seen her. Which means it's probably time. Time in a wibbly-wobbly way, at least."

"Time for what?" Rose asked, confused.

"For me to say goodbye. To her."

Rose frowned. "What?" she asked. "But you can't. She's gonna be in your life still."

The Doctor sighed, looking suddenly like a much older man than he appeared to be physically. Rose knew the feeling well.

"The first time I met River Song, I watched her die."

Oh, Rose thought. Well that just clinched it. Those two officially had the oddest relationship ever. And they were a match and a half for each other, not that Rose was about to admit that.

"She told me that the last time she'd seen me before then, I showed up and took her to Darrilium, the planet, to the singing towers. I gave her my sonic screwdriver so that it would save a part of her when she died, though she never knew that was why I did it. Because I knew it was time."

"But you'll still see her," Rose said, unconvinced. "She's still there, scattered through your future. It's not really goodbye for you."

"Much younger versions of her, I think. But yes," the Doctor admitted. "She's _all_ through my future. She'll be there when I die."

Rose flinched slightly. She'd known that. She knew more than that, even. She'd seen it. How did _he_ know it, though? She wondered whether River herself realised that he already knew that that was going to happen.

The Doctor smiled wryly. "Yeah, what a relationship, right? She saw me die when she was younger, and I saw her die when I was younger."

"And somewhere in between you each fell in love at different times," Rose said. God, it was heartbreaking. She couldn't even be completely selfish about it and be glad on her own behalf that that chapter of his life was ending, in a way. The story was far too tragic for that.

"Yes," the Doctor finally admitted. He met Rose's eyes. "I'm sorry."

"I never wanted you to be alone. Not really," Rose said. She tried to put on a brave face, but a tear slid down her cheek uninvited.

She wasn't quite sure who, out of the three of them, she was actually crying for.

"I know. And I love you even more for that, Rose Tyler," the Doctor said.

"Then why did you stop yourself?" Rose asked. "All those years ... you could've been happier than you were."

"Could I?" he asked sceptically. "Really? You humans see things so strangely. Life is like some big cycle. Grow up, marriage, children, grandchildren, retirement, death. The meaning of each step is all relative, and not entirely necessary, but you don't see that. River did make me happier than I would have been otherwise. Her involvement in my life isn't cheapened by the fact that it could have been more. I've long since learned to accept what I can get and make the most of it."

"But you _could_ have had more with River," Rose said. "That's my point."

She wasn't sure why she was pushing it. It wasn't as if she'd truly wanted him to have a proper affair with River. Perhaps it was just that she needed to know that it wasn't just about him wanting to punish himself and make himself miserable again.

The Doctor shrugged, as if it was nothing. "I seem to recall that you once waited about 450 years for me without being sure that you'd ever see me again. Then later I met a man — the most ordinary but brilliant of men — who waited nearly two thousand years for the woman _he_ loved. How could I have been properly happy if I just let that challenge go answered by moving on? How could I call myself the Doctor if I let two humans outclass me?"

He said it a bit like a joke, but Rose could tell that he was deadly serious. After they'd finally taken that step — that step that they might never have got the chance to take, if not for Rose's intervention — he truly wouldn't have ever replaced her that way, no matter what he'd felt for River or anyone else. He'd gone centuries without really having that kind of companionship before her, after all. There was no reason why he couldn't again, once he'd set his mind on it. He could still take new people into the TARDIS and his hearts, sure, but not like that.

Idiot, she couldn't help but think fondly.

"How do you know that River will be there when you die?" Rose asked tentatively.

"The first time I met her," the Doctor said, "River needed me to trust her, and we were running out of time, so she said the one thing that would guarantee I'd believe that I trusted her completely in the future. Something that I would have had to have told her when I was dying, because there's no other time I could."

Rose had seen him speaking softly in River's ear for a minute or so before he died. She'd heard most of his dying conversation, but not that part. That must have been when ...

"What was that?" Rose breathed.

"My name."

Rose blinked. "Your name?" she asked.

"My real name," he clarified. "Real-ish, I suppose. 'The Doctor' is as real as anything now, since I've been using it so long. My original name, I meant. There's a very complicated biological lock between myself and the TARDIS, so that if someone kills me to take the TARDIS, the TARDIS will die as well. So, the only way to prevent the TARDIS from dying when I die is to unlock her by using my name. She alone holds my name in the meantime to prevent me from giving it out all over the place. Not that I'd tell just anyone, willy nilly, of course, but there have been times ..." The Doctor looked at Rose pointedly, and she realised what he meant. He'd share that with her if he could. He hadn't shared that one thing with River but not with Rose by choice, really. "I literally am unable to say it until then," he continued, confirming her thoughts. "But then when I'm dying, the TARDIS starts dying as well, though much slower, and she knows to break the mental lock. So if I'm dying, and there's someone I would trust with the TARDIS — my home — there with me, I could tell them my name so they could help the TARDIS to live on. You see?"

Rose shook her head. "One day, I'm going to make you draw up a flowchart of your life in a way that I might actually understand."

"It doesn't matter," he said.

But it did matter. Rose might have difficulty grasping the technicalities, but she got the point of his babbling. The fixed point surrounding the Doctor's final death was the prevention of the universe collapsing. But a side effect was saving the TARDIS from dying alone.

Rose loved that ship, nearly as much as she loved the Doctor himself. Whatever she'd had to go through, that alone might have made it worthwhile.

"D'you want me to go now? To see River?" the Doctor asked suddenly. Rose could sense he wanted her to say no. She thought it was partly because he wanted to stay with Rose a little while longer, and partly because he wanted to put off saying goodbye to the older River. The next time, and every other time, he saw River, she'd be much younger, and probably have only an inkling that the two of them might ever be so close. She'd be affectionate towards him, likely, and definitely flirtatious, since that just seemed to be her way, but she wouldn't be aware of enough of their history for it to go deeper than that. He wasn't sending her away forever, but he also was in the ways that really mattered. Rose might be tempted to put that sort of thing off as well, if she was in the same position.

Rose couldn't help but be glad that, for all of the massive gaps that peppered their time together, she and the Doctor had at least lived their relationship mostly linearly. She didn't know what she'd do if she ever run into a younger Doctor now who'd never met her, and so had no feelings towards her. It would be so painful.

"It's up to you when," Rose said after a bit, which made a change from earlier. She'd thought she needed him to do it immediately, for her own piece of mind. But this wasn't about her. It was about him. And it was going to be hard enough on him no matter what, she thought. There was no need to exacerbate it. Let him take it at his own speed.

This version of the Doctor, however, seemed more aware of her underlying emotions. Or perhaps he'd grown more aware in his previous body while they'd still been together, but the change had been subtle enough that Rose hadn't noticed at the time. Whatever the cause, the Doctor seemed to realise that Rose really didn't want his unresolved relationship with River hanging over their heads any more than was necessary.

As it was, he was still going to have to go off without Rose each time the younger River called. It had been obvious enough from the one meeting Rose had had with River that Rose would never actually meet River again. That meant the Doctor would always be alone with her.

Rose would just have to deal with that, she supposed. At least the versions of River in question might not already be in love with the Doctor. Rose supposed that that was something.

The Doctor kissed Rose on the forehead and then stepped away from her.

"It's okay to say goodbye properly," Rose said, the words pretty much slipping out of their own accord. She wasn't quite sure what she meant by that, but it seemed the right sort of thing to say. He was effectively sending someone that he loved off to die. She didn't think it was quite fair for her to get too territorial just now.

Rose left the safety of the TARDIS and watched it dematerialise without her, biting her lip.

He wasn't leaving her behind. Not really. He'd come back, and soon. He had to. 

* * *

The Doctor was gone for hours. When he returned, his jacket was different and less obviously _tweed_ than the one he'd been wearing when he left. His eyes were red-rimmed and the faintest tracks of shed tears still marked his face.

Rose didn't know what had happened while he was gone. She didn't even know how long he'd been actually been gone on his end. Nor did Rose ask if he'd changed the coat for her benefit, after the way she'd ribbed him about the other one, or for River's.

Rose pulled the Doctor in towards her, holding onto him tightly. She decided it might be better if she never knew those sorts of things for sure.


	9. Epilogue

Epilogue

"How long are you going to stay with me, Rose Tyler?" the Doctor asked.

Unlike the last time he'd asked it, both of them recognised that the answer was really just a pretty fantasy. Even with her potential to live much longer than a normal human, everything still had to end sometime. It was the way of the universe.

Still. The point wasn't telling the truth.

"Forever," she vowed with a smile.

The point was the promise inherent in the word, and the need for both of them to hear it said out loud.

One day, Rose remembered, that man in front of her, who had both of his hands currently laced in hers, would die one last time to save the universe. He'd done that before, of course. But on that particular occasion, he wouldn't be able to come back with a new face and a broad smile, eager to figure himself out yet again and as willing as always to take on the universe.

Rose wouldn't be there with him as he died, either. Not really. There would be a much younger version of Rose, mid-way through her universe-hopping travels, off in hiding. Back then, she'd watched a scene for which she hadn't been able to piece together all the pieces until years later, so she hadn't quite understood the levity of all that she was seeing. And the Doctor certainly hadn't been aware that she was there for him, just out of reach.

Rose had crossed universes back then looking for the Doctor, a young man with insane-hedgehog hair and a constant sadness hidden behind his eyes, and instead she'd seen a dying man who looked so different, but was so obviously the same deep down.

Rose wouldn't be there to hold his hand as he passed, but she knew that River Song would be. The Doctor wouldn't die alone. He'd lie there, gasping his last breaths but somehow still kind of serene in his knowledge that his long life was finally ending. He'd tell River his name, then, the only thing he'd never been able to share with Rose.

That younger version of Rose had followed River afterwards. She'd been unbearably jealous of this strange woman who the Doctor had looked at that way as he was fading. In fact, she could admit in retrospect, Rose had just plain resented the hell out of River right then. Even having worked out from the conversation between River and the Doctor that it had been necessary to maintain the causal nexus that held the universe together, Rose still couldn't help but hate River a little for being the one to ultimately make the decision to sacrifice the Doctor's life. Not to mention that Rose also hated that the Doctor had trusted River enough to let her do it.

That younger Rose, in following River, had unwittingly seen what River had done with the Doctor's dying secret, though she didn't know it until much later. River had unlocked the TARDIS door, gone inside and saved a dying sort-of-machine's life. Then she'd re-emerged to meet a boy who had appeared beside the TARDIS soon after River had. The boy had tears running down his face, despite his expression looking otherwise strangely cold at that moment.

Well, Rose called him a boy because physically he looked just like a lad in his mid-teens. But his eyes, when that younger Rose had managed to catch sight of them, looked like they'd seen so many more years than just a decade and a half. Just like the Doctor's. Just like Rose's own. Like that boy had actually lived sixty years even though he barely _looked_ sixteen.

"He said to tell you he was sorry he couldn't hold on long enough to see you," River had told the boy, and he'd nodded, looking suddenly more miserable at her words. Rose had found that, at the time she'd been watching it, she much preferred that sadness to the emotionless mask that even she, a complete stranger, had been able to tell was just a fragile shield erected between him and the world.

"And what? He thought leaving me the TARDIS would be fair compensation?" the boy had asked angrily.

"He wanted you two to have each other, I think," River had said.

River had rested a reassuring hand on the boy's shoulder and he'd let it sit for a moment, even though he didn't look like he was drawing any strength from the gesture. Then he'd pulled away and drawn a key from his pocket. He had shut the door after him when he'd entered the TARDIS without looking back at River once, then the TARDIS had swiftly disappeared off through time and space. Younger Rose had stood there, wondering what on Earth she had just witnessed.

Who was that woman to the Doctor? Who in the universe was that odd boy, who had a key to the Doctor's ship and could obviously fly the TARDIS completely independently of the Doctor himself? Why would the Doctor leave his TARDIS to someone else? And how had the boy even known that the Doctor had died, anyway?

Rose now thought she knew the answers, though. Rose rested her hand against her abdomen and sighed.

The curse of the Time Lords, even apparently not-quite-fully-fledged Time Lords, was to outlive everyone they knew, even each other. Rose had only known the Doctor for a year when he'd thrown that fact in her face like a mile-high obstacle to prevent her from getting too close. It hadn't worked against her, in the long run; she'd pushed and pushed until the shield finally wore down and became brittle enough to snap. She just hoped that that boy managed to find someone who'd ignore the stupid protective mechanisms he would inevitably set up one day as well. She hoped he'd be happy, at least most of the time. She couldn't stand to believe it would be otherwise.

"You all right?" the Doctor asked her, snapping her out of her ponderings.

Rose smiled at him, swinging their joined hands cheerfully between them. "You know me."

"Yeah," he said seriously. "I do. That's why I'm asking. When I say 'Are you all right', I actually mean 'Tell me what's wrong'. It's a secret Time Lord code to phrase it like it's a choice, so you don't accuse me of being too officious, as we Time Lords always tended to be."

Rose laughed. "You know what, Mr Officious Time Lord? Right now, as of this very second, nothing at all is wrong."

She had to focus on that. She'd learned long ago that not living in the moment could break a person.

"Yeah?" the Doctor asked.

Rose let go of the Doctor's hands so she could step into his arms, which willingly enfolded around her. Somehow, even though she'd known this man in three very different forms so far, the fit of her body against his always felt just right. She laid her head against his shoulder. "Yeah," she breathed into his ear. "Everything's perfect."

She felt the Doctor smile against her cheek, but then that quirk of the lips fell away.

"Perfect," he repeated, his voice suddenly wavering slightly. "Yes. Well. Sure. Everything's absolutely perfect. Except for _that_."

Rose turned, pulling out of his arms, and looked at the massive lizard-like alien that seemed to be stampeding quickly towards them. It didn't look happy. Not at all.

"Perfect," Rose said, this time sounding sarcastic. "Couldn't even find us a planet where we wouldn't be chased by aliens for two seconds, could you? So much for having a romantic moment."

"It's not my fault," the Doctor protested, wide eyed.

Rose sighed. "Run?"

"Run!"

Their hands found each other as they sprinted away towards the TARDIS, the irate alien on their heels. In a way, Rose thought, that moment of running for their lives was actually about as romantic as the two of them could get. His hand in hers, their three hearts all thumping wildly, tearing away from danger with smiles inching onto their faces.

She'd said it sardonically, but it was actually true in a way. It was perfect.

Perfection was temporary, and it was almost always an illusion, but both of them had seen so little of it in their lives. When it, or something close enough so as to make no difference, came along in a guise that would seem strange and probably ridiculous to anyone else (escaping from aliens included), they had to grab onto the feeling with both hands and hold on for life. Those moments were fleeting, sure, but they were still _there_, and so they were no less important for their brevity.

Rose would be damned if she didn't enjoy it all while it lasted.

~FIN~


End file.
